[tex-live] No room for a new \write

Jonathan Kew jonathan_kew at sil.org
Sat Mar 17 14:03:09 CET 2007


On 17 Mar 2007, at 11:58 am, Frank Küster wrote:

> Taco Hoekwater <taco at elvenkind.com> wrote:
>
>> I don't think I have ever seen an example where there was a serious
>> need for more than 16 read or write allocators. I would like to  
>> see an
>> actual example of a document with no programming errors and with no
>> excessively sloppy handling of resources that still needs more than
>> 16 distinct read or write handles (simultaneously or sequentially).
>>
>> I presume such a document is possible, but until I see a practical
>> example, I am very reluctant to support/do a change to eTeX.
>
> I would have to dig through the archives, but I think I remember an
> example in de.comp.text.tex, and if I'm not mistaken it used a
> combination of various packages, one of which writes one file per
> chapter for chapterwise TOC, LOF, LOT.  4 chapters with three such  
> files
> each gives already 12 files (sequentially),

That gives 12 files, yes. But there's no reason for it to use 12  
\write streams. Just close the streams at end of chapter, and re-open  
with new filenames for the next. So 3 streams are enough for such a  
package to handle any number of chapters, even without interleaving  
the records in a single file and then distinguishing them as they're  
re-read later.

JK



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