[Problem] The \psspan macro doesn't work in "psmatrix" environments

[Denis Girou]

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  Stanislav Brabec <utx at k332.feld.cvut.cz> report recently that the \multispan
"plain" macro is broken by a change made in PSTricks 97 for LaTeX 2e
compatibility.

  And in any case looking at this problem, I see that the \psspan macro of the
"psmatrix" environment doesn't work because an undefined \iterate macro is
required.

  Stanislav Brabec sent a correction for the first problem, but this did not
solve the one with \psspan. Here is the patch for pst-node.tex that I finish to
found, but this was not obvious at all. And I'm not completely sure that it has
not some side effects.

% DG/SR modification begin - Nov. 27, 1998 - Patch 8
% Workaround for problem with \psspan in LaTeX 2e
%\let\mscount\@multicnt
\newcount\mscount % Only defined in 209 compatiblity mode in LaTeX 2e
\def\psspan#1{\global\mscount#1\loop\ifnum\mscount>\@ne\sp at n\repeat}
\def\sp at n{\span\omit\global\advance\mscount\m at ne}
\def\loop#1\repeat{\gdef\iterate{#1\relax\expandafter\iterate\fi}%
\iterate\let\iterate\relax}
% DG/SR modification end

  This change is documented as:

  * 98/11/27 pst-node.tex (97 patch 8): The \multispan "plain" macro is broken
by a change made in PSTricks 97 for LaTeX 2e compatibility. And in any case
the \psspan macro of the "psmatrix" environment doesn't work because an
undefined \iterate macro is required.
(reported by Stanislav Brabec <utx at k332.feld.cvut.cz> and
Denis Girou <Denis.Girou at idris.fr>)

  My test case is:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{pst-node}

\pagestyle{empty}

\begin{document}

\makeatletter
%% DG/SR modification begin - Nov. 27, 1998 - Patch 8
%% Workaround for problem with \psspan in LaTeX 2e
\newcount\mscount % Only defined in 209 compatiblity mode in LaTeX 2e
\def\psspan#1{\global\mscount#1\loop\ifnum\mscount>\@ne\sp at n\repeat}
\def\sp at n{\span\omit\global\advance\mscount\m at ne}
\def\loop#1\repeat{\gdef\iterate{#1\relax\expandafter\iterate\fi}%
\iterate\let\iterate\relax}
%% DG/SR modification end
\makeatother

\begin{psmatrix}[mnode=oval]
  AAAAAAAA \psspan{4} \\
  BB & CC & DD & EE
\end{psmatrix}

\end{document}

D.G.

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