Including a missing \documentclass and a sectioning level

[niruvt]

In section 02 of lesson 04 (link) we have added a list of levels of sectioning, but I was surprised to see the absence of part in this list. What is the reason for excluding it?

Also in the list of sections we explain that for chapters we need to use book or report document class, but why not memoir? Is it not a standard document class?

[josephwright]

\part doesn't really create logical structure: doesn't show up in the TOC, etc. or add to numbering. We could I guess add it to perhaps the 'more' text.

The standard classes are (minimal), article, report, book, letter and slides: the last one in particular is not
really useful today, whilst minimal is essentially a historical leftover from kernel testing. memoir isn't provided by the team, so it's not a 'standard' class, although it is widely used for books. I guess this is a question of how open-ended we want to make things.

[sieversMartin]

\part doesn't really create logical structure: doesn't show up in the TOC, etc. or add to numbering. We could I guess add it to perhaps the 'more' text.

It does show up in the TOC ...

\documentclass{book}

\begin{document}
   \tableofcontents
   
   \part{A part}
   \chapter{A chapter}
\end{document}

[josephwright]

I meant in that it doesn't affect the numbering: section X.Y is unaffected by which part it's in, in contrast to say a chapter.

[josephwright]

I'm not saying we can't add \part, only that it's not quite the same as \chapter or \section.

[niruvt]

LaTeX can divide up documents into quite a few levels.

This is the exact line in our tutorial and IMO \part is a valid level provided by some document classes. So I think it can be a part of this list.

About memoir I understand your point. Still as we know that it is widely used by many users and tested for a long time, it would be amazing to mention it. Of course this is just my personal opinion. Decision is up to the authors ultimately.

[josephwright]

LaTeX can divide up documents into quite a few levels.

This is the exact line in our tutorial and IMO \part is a valid level provided by some document classes. So I think it can be a part of this list.

I'm going to see what others think before making an edit. @davidcarlisle probably has a view, and there may well be others watching/commenting too.

About memoir I understand your point. Still as we know that it is widely used by many users and tested for a long time, it would be amazing to mention it. Of course this is just my personal opinion. Decision is up to the authors ultimately.

We do have memoir and KOMA in https://www.learnlatex.org/en/lesson-05; the idea in lesson 4 was to bring in concepts gradually. If we add memoir in L4, we really have to add KOMA too, and that then gets a bit tricky for a reader to follow. It's not easy working out how to order basic ideas: they are all needed to get going, and here one could go for the opposite order.

[niruvt]

I'm going to see what others think before making an edit. @davidcarlisle probably has a view, and there may well be others watching/commenting too.

Sure!

We do have memoir and KOMA in https://www.learnlatex.org/en/lesson-05; the idea in lesson 4 was to bring in concepts gradually. If we add memoir in L4, we really have to add KOMA too, and that then gets a bit tricky for a reader to follow. It's not easy working out how to order basic ideas: they are all needed to get going, and here one could go for the opposite order.

I agree. This is a good reason to not include memoir here.