Getting More Serious

Let us suppose, although I cannot imagine that this could possibly be the case, that you have more serious problems with points, subpoints and subsubpoints. Perhaps you would prefer to define your own listing macros so that
mypoint
generates a point whose highlight is a capital letter followed by a period;
myspoint
generates a subpoint highlighted by a number square brackets; and
mysspoint
generates a subsubpoint highlighted by a lowercase letter in parentheses. You have two options, you can write your own macro set or you can use the PHYZZX command
newlist
.

The command
newlist
allows you to define your own listing macros which format things in a manner which is closer to your heart's desire. All you have to decide is what sort of delimiters you want around the highlighting number and what you want the numbering convention for that level of point to be. Your available choices are the five defined when we discussed changing chapterstyle; namely,
Number
, Alphabetic,
alphabetic
,
Roman
or
roman
.

The syntax of the newlist command is as follows
newlist
name= [left delim.][style]& [right delim.] & [dimen];
(Note that the =, & , and ; all count.) As an example of its application note that the
point
command is defined by saying
newlist
point=
Number&.&1.0
itemsize;
This line tells PHYZZX to define a new command called
point
and to have it generate a highlighting symbol which consists of no left delimiter, followed by a number, followed by a right delimiter which is a period and the indentation of a point is to be 1.0
itemsize
. Similarly, subpoints are defined to be
newlist
subpoint=(
alphabetic&)&1.75
itemsize;
and subsubpoints are defined by saying
newlist
subsubpoint=(
roman&)&2.5
itemsize;
The abbreviations for
subpoint
and
subsubpoint
are obtained by following their definition with the statements
let
spoint=
subpoint

let
sspoint=
subsubpoint
Note, if you have chosen to redefine
subpoint
and
subsubpoint
using newlist, the commands
spoint
and
sspoint
will not be redefined unless you follow your newlist instructions with the two lines printed above.

To define the new set of listing macros mentioned earlier you would type
newlist
mypoint=
Alphabetic&.&1.0
itemsize;

newlist
myspoint=[
number & ]& 1.75
itemsize;
and
newlist
mysspoint=(
alphabetic& )&
2.5
itemsize;
Note, while there are only five styles available for numbering things, delimiters are limited only by your imagination.