Message-Id: <199402071429.AA11410@mail.cs.tu-berlin.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Date:         Mon, 7 Feb 1994 14:26:47 GMT
From: Philip TAYLOR <CHAA006@VAX.RHBNC.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

I have to say that the demise or otherwise of \footheight affects me not one
wit.  However, one of the reasons adduced for its withdrawal is the paucity
of registers; for example, David Carlisle wrote:

> That does not mean that all the other thousands of LaTeX users should
> have one of the very limited dimen registers wasted by being allocated
> but never used.

and this caused me to look further at the LaTeX-2e source.  I was surprised
to find that the original TeX/LaTeX register allocation code appears virtually
unchanged: that is, each of \new{count|dimen|skip|muskip|box|toks|read|write|
fam|language} is defined in terms of a unique global count register.  If
registers are in such short supply (and here I confess I am generalising
from David's specific argument, which referred solely to <dimen> registers),
then should LaTeX-2e be so profligate with their use for an activity which
even the most hardened hacker would surely agree is an occasional or even rare
event?  Would it not be better to use pseudo-registers for the register
allocation mechanism, rather than real count registers?

                                        Philip Taylor, RHBNC.