[pdftex] tiny supp-{pdf,mis}.tex bug? line numbers TeX/MSWord

[Marco Loskamp]

Hi,

I have two quick questions, and one little thought about TeX/MSWord
that I don't recall reading in the discussion [where I'll probably
be wrong?]

1. supp-{pdf,mis}.tex   seem to have the following problem:

texlive-distribution (ftp.tug.org)
/texlive/Images
-rw-r--r--   1 2050     100     326219298   Jun  4  2002   texlive7-20020604-cd1.iso.bz2

   [note that the same happens with pdftex-1.10b, the latest]
   [also the supp-{pdf,mis}.tex provided on www.pdftex.org give the same]

   me at mycomputer:~ > pdftex nix
   This is pdfTeX, Version 3.14159-1.00b-pretest-20020211 (Web2C 7.3.7x)
   (./nix.tex{/usr/TeX/texmf-var/pdftex/config/pdftex.cfg} (./supp-pdf.tex
   (./supp-mis.tex
   loading : Context Support Macros / Missing
   )
   loading : Context Support Macros / PDF
   Runaway argument?
   \par 
   ! Forbidden control sequence found while scanning use of \beginETEX.
   <inserted text> 
                   \par 
   <to be read again> 
                      \newdimen 
   l.1284   \newdimen
                     \MPcriteriumA \MPcriteriumA=512pt
   ? x
   No pages of output.
   Transcript written on nix.log.

The file was just
   % <nix.tex>
   \input supp-pdf.tex
   \input supp-mis.tex
   \bye
   % </nix.tex>


2. line numbers in output file (pdf, dvi, ...)

   Is it somehow possible to include line numbers to, say, every 5th line
   in the output file [not \inputlineno]?  So far, I could only find the
   \prevgraf internal integer, but I could only access it from inside a
   math display.

   I would "need" the line numbers in pure text files.


3. TeX/MSWord

   I was talking the other day to a student of typography who told me that
   "no" typesetting program [she was, I guess, mainly talking about major
   programs like MSWord, Adobe products, ...] would have control over
   extra spacing between letters, like V/o and such. When I told her about
   TeX/metafont's ligature ability, she was quite convinced that this is
   a *real* typesetting program. [To her personally, this was not important
   enough for her (as a graphics designer) to change to TeX, but
   nevertheless...]


Thanks for any advice you can give.
[and for all the advice I could already
get thru enjoying to read the pdftex-mails
for more than a year and a half now ;-) ]

Marco
-----
Marco Loskamp
UW-Madison Math grad student
480 Lincoln Drive
Madison, WI 53705