Message-Id: <199401071106.AA21338@mail.cs.tu-berlin.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Date:         Thu, 6 Jan 1994 20:13:26 +0100
From: Frank Mittelbach <MITTELBACH@mzdmza.zdv.uni-mainz.de>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: clearpage and AtEndDocument hooks
Status: R

> Subj: \clearpage and \AtEndDocument hooks

Happy new year everybody.

I will probably answer a lot of mails out of order or even miss
several, but i do have good excuses for it :-) they killed my account
and then shuffled my mail folders as a new year present

> There is commented-out code in latex.dtx that would issue a \clearpage
> before executing end-document hooks if there are dangling floats.  The
> text says that such clearing is controversial.

one should never argue in documentation it seems. No, the position
isn't any longer controversial, but see below.

> If this is the case, and if executing \clearpage in latex itself is indeed
> controversial (i.e., there are cases when you _don't_ want the \clearpage
> before executing the hook), it seems to me that there's an argument for
> two sets of end document hook, one executed before and one after the final
> \clearpage.

this is certainly one possibility but it would lead to a lot of hooks
because you can think of so many places to ``hook code in''. the
problem is where do we stop?

> As things stand at present, a hook that requires to be executed before the
> final \clearpage needs to guarantee that it's in the correct place in the
> hook, which leads us back to <= 2.09 hackery, imho...

this may be the case, but: can you think of concurring applications
that do not know about the other both needing the hook? I thought that
such a hook will be used only for special layouts.

>
> So what's wrong with my reasoning?  What _is_ the controversy about the
> \clearpage?

As long as there is only a limited use of the hook the current
position is correct since it is trivial to issue a \clearpage within
the hook (disabling the "official" one) and thus move the code after
the clear page.

However, if we really think that there are a lot of independent usages
both before and after the \clearpage we might be better off by
actually adding a

\AfterEndDocument or something hook

in addition.

comments?

I won't promise anything since this is the type of enhancement you can
make forever but ...

cheers
Frank