[Tugindia] Re: latex error with old file

[David Kastrup]

Sivaram Neelakantan <sivaram.neelakandan@wipro.com> writes:

> [snip]
> > .... is not a valid hyperref option.
> 
>     > \headheight and \textheight are not macros, but lengths.  You
>     > set them with \setlength, not \renewcommand.
> 
> right, that fixed it! thanks
> 
>     > This would not have worked with any version of LaTeX, ever.
> 
> Actually, it did!

If it did, certainly by luck instead of design.  And I would not be
surprised if some more obscure effects occured that you never traced
back to that.  To some degree, a macro can serve as a substitute for a
length register when just read out, but lots of things can go wrong.
That you noticed no problem might not mean that there hasn't been one.

> I have a whole bunch of latex files(the corresponding pdf files
> without the error) having \renewcommand instead of \setlength.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum