Re: @smallbook and friends

[Karl Berry]

    make @example compute that parameter automatically to fit the line, 

It's not practical to implement that in TeX, as far as I can imagine
anyway.  It'd have to read the whole example before typesetting it, and
that could get into serious problems with nested environments, unusual
commands, etc.  (The catcodes will get set when they're read and can't
get changed back.)

The command should only be used in unusual circumstances anyway, it
seems to me, so making the user specify the number doesn't seem too bad.

I guess @sizedverbatim and @sizedverbatiminclude could be useful too.
Maybe even more so.

    After all, I'd be surprised to hear that some authors deliberately
    wants their @example lines to overflow the line length.

Right -- but ordinarily it's better to rewrite the example text.

Thanks,
karl