[tex-k] teTeX-beta 20021116 and source specials and the syntax package

[Kai Großjohann]

Olaf Weber <olaf@infovore.xs4all.nl> writes:

> Kai Großjohann writes:
>
>> I used to use TeXlive 7 which grokked source specials fine.
>
> It didn't.  There are two changes in TeXlive 7 w.r.t. source specials.
> One ensures that a source special will be inserted using an "internal"
> special token, so that they cannot be affected by a redefinition of
> \special.

I'm sorry.  This is not what I meant to say.  I meant that it
processes my document and produces a dvi I can look at.  (But I did
notice indented paragraphs which shouldn't have been indented.)

> The other fiddled with the location of the every_par source special.
> My log entry for this reads:
>
>         Delay the generation of everypar source specials until after
>         the \everypar processing has been done, because they could be
>         easily "captured" otherwise
>
> This is what made it into TeX-live 7.  It turned out to have major
> undesirable side effects on the formatting of documents, and was
> backed out because the previous situation was judged to be the least
> of two evils.  That log entry reads as follows:
>
>         Back out the change that moved the generation of src_specials.
>         It in turn led to markedly different results in "normal" input
>         that is considerably more common than the constructions that
>         prompted the change.  The upshot is that at present I know of
>         _no_ non-intrusive way to implement source specials, and
>         enabling them may break your documents in unexpected ways.
>
> The upshot is that source specials are incompatible with certain
> packages, and fixing that requires changes that would be far more
> invasive of the TeX internals than the implementation is.

So what should I do?

I found out (read: Stefan told me) that generating fewer source
specials works with that package.  Also, the package apparently can
be changed to just skip the source specials.  And then, I could
abstain from the syntax package.

Sorry for the line-noise.
-- 
~/.signature is: umop ap!sdn    (Frank Nobis)