Message-Id: <199402031749.AA26782@opal.cs.tu-berlin.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Date:         Thu, 3 Feb 1994 14:20:23 LCL
From: Mike Piff <M.Piff@sheffield.ac.uk>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: On the death of \footheight
Status: R

From:          Paul Taylor <pt@doc.imperial.ac.uk>
%>
%>\dimendef\footheight=0 would solve most of these problems.
%>

How about "virtual dimen"s, that only get defined when the user needs them,
for instance, when assigning to them?

Mike Piff

\def\virtualdimen#1{%
   \edef\virtdef{%
      \gdef\csname#1\endcsname{%
         \noexpand\ifx\csname#1\endcsname\csname#1virt\endcsname
            \noexpand\newdimen\csname#1\endcsname
            \global\let\csname#1virt\endcsname\noexpand\undefined
         \noexpand\fi
         \csname#1\endcsname
       }
       \global\let\csname#1virt\endcsname\csname#1\endcsname
   }%
   \virtdef
}
\virtualdimen{footheight}

\footheight\baselineskip

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%% Dr M J Piff, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of %%
%% Sheffield, UK.                    e-mail: M.Piff@sheffield.ac.uk %%
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%