References: <m0ynSs5-000DLbC@bilbo.yavuz.de>
            <199806271853.UAA29351@frank.zdv.uni-mainz.de>
            <VHf01AiKBh108h@dream.kn-bremen.de>
            <13778.40005.889304.525595@isidor>
Message-ID:  <199808171927.VAA00236@frank.zdv.uni-mainz.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project
              <LATEX-L@URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
In-Reply-To:  <13778.40005.889304.525595@isidor>
Date:         Mon, 17 Aug 1998 21:27:01 +0200
From: Frank Mittelbach <Frank.Mittelbach@UNI-MAINZ.DE>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project
              <LATEX-L@URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L
              <LATEX-L@URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
Subject:      Re: Modules
Status: R

Bernd

 > On Wed, 12 August 1998 21:49:41 +0200,
 > Martin Schroeder <ms@DREAM.KN-BREMEN.DE> writes:
 >  > In <199806271853.UAA29351@frank.zdv.uni-mainz.de> Frank Mittelbach <Frank.Mittelbach@UNI-MAINZ.DE> writes:
 >  > >b) will be drastic: a current LaTeX format (without any packages
 >  > >loaded) uses about 51088 words of memory before begin document; if the
 >  > >average word length in commands is 10 (which is far too low with a
 >  > >consequent implemented module concept) then this gets basically blown
 >  > >to 500000 which is twice the amount of main mem
 > [...]
 >
 > Frank, either I misunderstand your ``word'' or you are wrong with this
 > analysis.

i guess neither. :-) the problem is that Martin cited me out of
context. I was replying to a suggestion to replace TeX's token based
mechanism, ie \foobar being internally one token in main mem and a few
bits of char mem, with a mechanism in which \foobar is 7 tokens ---
only that we were discussing \foo/bar_bas_... eg even longer streams
of tokens stored and processed each time.

my claim back then is that TeX is tailored to be a token based program
and that giving this up is undesirable for several reasons.

frank