[pdftex] pdf objects with references to each other?

[Hans Hagen]

At 03:29 PM 3/30/2002 +0100, Heiko Oberdiek wrote:
>On Sat, 30 Mar 2002, Hans Hagen wrote:
>
> > \setbox \yourbox {\immediate\pdfobj{...}\xdef\nicepointer{\the\pdflastobj}}
>                     ^^^^^^^^^^
>Because of \immediate an empty pdf object is created.
>So a \pdfobj{} without referencing does not generate
>an empty object in the pdf file, only the xref table
>is enlarged by a free number.

sure, but i assume that ... is something useful; also the fact that 
\pdfobj{} generates no object in the file is a side effect, since i could 
equally expect an real empty object ending up in the file since this is 
what is asked for; since there is a limit on the number of free object i 
hate the idea of 'free numbers' apart from the fact that 'enlarged' is also 
unspecified;

even the fact that \pdfobj, \pdfannot etc generates numbers of the same 
kind is only true because we observe that; if the pdf standard would have 
negative numbers for annotations, it woudl go unnoticed in most macros, 
unless one starts incrementing or decrementing, which is one reason why in 
context i never make any assumptions about order or nature of those numbers.

Hans
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