No need to number a single affiliation, or when a single author

[jegi]

It would be nice not to attach labels associating authors to affiliations when there is no ambiguity (only one affiliation, perhaps shared between multiple authors; or only one author, perhaps with multiple affiliations). I can hack something together using "explicit affiliations", but it would be neater not to have to do that.

[jegi]

Concretely, I can do this:

\author[]{Tobias Pape}
\authorinfo{is the author of this {LaTeX} class. Contact him at
  \email{tobias.pape@hpi.uni-potsdam.de}.}
\author[]{Robert Hirschfeld}
\authorinfo{is chair of the AOSA steering committee. The Art, Science,
  and Engineering of Programming is published by AOSA. Contact Robert at \email{hirschfeld@hpi.uni-potsdam.de}.}
\affiliation[\relax]{\hspace*{-\leftmargini}\!Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Germany}

which seems to work. But why do I need that small negative space too?

[krono]

Thanks for logging this there.

I'll have to make my mind up.

To the original question raised, i had responded:

I am at fault for trading consistency across all articles (and, frankly, ease of implementation) for
immediate clarity/beauty for just one article.

[jegi]

I accept the "ease of implementation" issue. But personally I'd favour general consistency of style allowing for minor tweaks in special cases, rather than rigid adherence to consistency. Oscar Wilde is relevant.

[krono]

I did not make clear that my statement above gives some historical account. I just provided it in case I forget (which I do constantly…) not to argument a position