Message-Id: <9306141629.AA24931@sc.zib-berlin.dbp.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
Date:         Mon, 14 Jun 93 17:00:08 BST
From: P.Taylor@RHBNC.AC.UK
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
To: Multiple Recipients of <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
Subject:      Re: questions on CD task
Status: R


Dear Frank ---

>>> To give some further example, trying to use AMS-LaTeX together with
>>> pictex crashes as soon as you try to define another two or three
>>> dimens registers. Since this is a sort of a hard limit in TeX (and
>>> doesn't even change when you use a big TeX) the LaTeX3 programmers
>>> language knows about special data structures called fake counters
>>> (slightly slower sort of count registers (about 200 probably in
>>> addition to the real ones)  ...

I am sure --- certain, even --- that you have a very good reason for
providing a fixed number of fake counters, but may I urge you to
re-consider this decision?  one of the fundamental problems of TeX,
as you well know, is the small, fixed, number of certain entities
which it provides: in the light of this experience, would it not make
sense to allow an a TeX-extension module such as LaTeX-3 an infinite
number of all entities, limited only by the available storage space,
and interchangeable in that if, overall, an implementation allowed
$n$ words of space, this $n$ could be partitioned among the fake counters,
fake dimens, fake families, etc, in a totally flexible way?

					** Phil.