[pdftex] thread primitives

[Hans Hagen]

At 03:02 PM 4/9/01 +0200, Andreas Matthias wrote:
>There are two sorts of primitives to create threads:
>
>1. \pdfthread
>2. \pdfstartthread and \pdfendthread
>
>Will both be maintained in future versions of pdftex?
>Is \pdfthread obsolete?
 
if i'm right, it's the reverse, since threads are to be handled by the
macro package and concern boxes [like columns in otr] the start/stop is
less usefull than the general thread one; there were also problems with
nesting, decisions to be made etc so the threads were reimplemented quite
some time ago.  

also, the article thread are not that well defined with respect with their
behavior especially since some features depend on the viewer; the auto
scaling makes it hard to provide a consistent interface; also, since in
pdftex you have control over about everything, you can easily provide a
link based alternative

Hans    
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