Message-Id: <199402071756.AA18203@mail.cs.tu-berlin.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
In-Reply-To:  <9402071743.AA20959@m1.cs.man.ac.uk> (message from Mike Piff on
              Mon, 7 Feb 1994 16:17:48 LCL)
Date:         Mon, 7 Feb 1994 17:55:32 GMT
From: David Carlisle <carlisle@cs.man.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: register usage
Status: R

>>>>> "Mike" == Mike Piff <M.Piff@shef.ac.uk> writes:

Mike> From: Philip TAYLOR <CHAA006@vax.rhbnc.ac.uk>
      ... Would it not be better to use pseudo-registers for the
      register allocation mechanism, rather than real count registers?
      ...

Mike> I think I understand what you mean. You keep the fact that
Mike> \dimen88 is the next to be allocated in a macro defined to
Mike> expand to 88. You then get \newdimen to use this 88, which is
Mike> assigned to \count5, say, incremented, and then put back instead
Mike> of 88 ready for next time. Is this right?
...

I'd use \countdef rather than a macro, but that is the basic idea (I
assume:-)

However there are lots of places that latex could be optimised, but
that is out of the scope of what we are trying to do with 2e.
LaTeX2e *is* LaTeX2.09 apart from the publicised changes (NFSS2 &
output routine) & the extended and new commands.

The whole \footheight saga began as, while looking at the output
routine, it was noticed that it was never used anywhere. So we thought
it would be safe to omit it, and put a `fake definition' in
compatibility mode'.

Well it turns out that this was wrong, as people (one person at least)
have used this register `because it was there' so compatibility mode
at least, will allocate a new register for \footheight (once we get
round to adding the definition).

David