[tex-live] No room for a new \write

[Heiko Oberdiek]

On Sat, Mar 17, 2007 at 11:50:39AM +0100, Taco Hoekwater wrote:

> I presume such a document is possible, but until I see a practical
> example, I am very reluctant to support/do a change to eTeX. Not in
> the least because of \write18 compatibility issues.

I don't see a problem leaving a gap that \write16, \write17,
\write18 or other special \write registers aren't effected by
the write register allocation. The allocation code just need
to know, how to reliable test whether additional writes are
available. For exmaple, e-TeX version number, if it would be
part of e-TeX. Or a new primitive for this purpose.

Yours sincerely
  Heiko <oberdiek at uni-freiburg.de>