[texhax] question about \if

[Susan Dittmar]

Quoting Vafa Khalighi (vafakhlgh at gmail.com):
> I do not know Uwe, so making fun of someone who you do not know and have not
> seen before is already stupid. If I ever wanted to make fun of him and his
> national identity, there were heaps of things but who and what human virtues
> allow me to mock him or anyone else. I am very proud to be an Iranian and I
> see nothing that makes me ashamed of my national identity even if some fools
> try to make fun of my national identity.

I think you misunderstood Uwe's humor completely. I cannot quote, as I
already deleted his mail from my system. But his joke had nothing to do at
all with Iran.

If I remember correctly, he sent you an answer that totally fulfilled your
requirements *as written* (\newcommand{\test}{true}), but which was of
course, as he knew very well, not what you were looking for. I guess it was
his first thought when reading the phrasing of your request, and having
seen that others already had sent you answers to your true question, he
just shared his mirth with us.

The only point where your signature and thus your devotion to Iran came
into play was the fact that his joke might be received as humiliating. So
he apologized (or, as I wrote before, tried to apologize, as he used a
word-by-word translation of a German apology, which in English might not be
as easily read as apology) in his mail already, trying to avoid exactly the
anger this thread now caused.

I do not know Uwe personally either. I just know his name from this mailing
list. And I *always* read his mails, because even if his English is not as
smooth as that of a native speaker, his TeX knowledge is amazing. I already
learned a lot from his posts, and as far as I can tell he frequently spends
significant amounts of time with elaborate and sound solutions to others'
problems. 

So please cool down. As far as I can tell, in this thread a completely
harmless thing exploded due to misunderstanding. As far as I can tell no
disrespect was intentioned.

Just my thoughs,

	Susan