[pdftex] early availability of pdf output?

[ivo welch]

hi reinhard:  thanks for pointing me there.  actually, the pdftex manual 
does have a really nice explanation of .pdf.  I now actually have a clue 
of what I am using!   and, yes, of course, I use includeonly, which 
makes my life generally liveable.  unfortunately, when I have to 
rearrange chapters to look at .toc's (as I have to do right now), this 
is not as useful.

I started to read the adobe stuff about linearized postscript, but then 
realized that it is too complex for me.  For curiosity: does the 
linearization header have to be complete, or can it be partial?  (If 
partial xref headers are ok, there would be easy solutions.  I presume I 
really need only the FontFile stream available immediately [if the other 
stuff, like highlighting, is not 100% correct [like a .toc is not 
correct on the first run], its ok], which could be extracted from 
previously written files (\jobname.pdfxrefs), and just prepended.)  But, 
pdf linearization has been rehashed to death, so I would presume that 
the answer is no.

thanks, reinhard.

regards,  /ivo