[Rd] \middle in Rd.sty conflicts with newer LaTeX?

[Prof Brian Ripley]

The conflict is with e-tex.  Please use latex, not e-latex.

This comes up on MikTeX (Windows) too.  We'll try to work around this for 
the next release.

On Thu, 1 Jul 2004, Na Li wrote:

> 
> Rd.sty defines 
> 
> \newlength{\middle}
> 
> which seems to be in conflict with the my latex installation.
> 
> Here is a minimal example:
> 
> \documentclass{article}
> \newlength{\middle}
> \begin{document}
> \end{document}
> 
> It runs fine on a Linux box:
> 
> carp:136% latex test.tex 
> This is TeX, Version 3.14159 (Web2C 7.3.1)
> (test.tex
> LaTeX2e <2000/06/01>
> Babel <v3.7h> and hyphenation patterns for american, french, german, ngerman, i
> talian, nohyphenation, loaded.
> (/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/base/article.cls
> Document Class: article 2000/05/19 v1.4b Standard LaTeX document class
> (/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/base/size10.clo))
> No file test.aux.
> (test.aux) )
> No pages of output.
> Transcript written on test.log.
> 
> but fails on a Mac with the TeX installed using GW's i-installer:
> 
> bass$ latex test.tex 
> This is e-TeXk, Version 3.141592-2.1 (Web2C 7.5.2)
>  \write18 enabled.
>  %&-line parsing enabled.
>  (/usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.tetex/web2c/cp8bit.tcx)
> entering extended mode
> (./test.tex
> LaTeX2e <2001/06/01>
> Babel <v3.7h> and hyphenation patterns for american, nohyphenation, loaded.
> (/usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.tetex/tex/latex/base/article.cls
> Document Class: article 2001/04/21 v1.4e Standard LaTeX document class
> (/usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.tetex/tex/latex/base/size10.clo))
> 
> ! LaTeX Error: Command \middle already defined.
>                Or name \end... illegal, see p.192 of the manual.
> 
> I couldn't find where \middle is defined.  Has anyone else experienced
> the same problem?  
> 
> Michael
> 
> 

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595