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Date:         Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:03:48 +0100
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From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Morten_H=F8gholm?= <morten.hoegholm@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: changing page dimensions in mid-document (was Re: Key points of LaTex3)
To: LATEX-L@LISTSERV.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE
In-Reply-To:  <18808.14594.895857.730057@morse.mittelbach-online.de>
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Status: R

On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 10:14 AM, Frank Mittelbach
<frank.mittelbach@latex-project.org> wrote:
> Joseph, Paul
>
>  > > 5) Changing page dimensions in the middle of the document:
>  > > Middlebach says this can't be done, but I have done it in
>  > > my newlfm macro, and I say "rubbish" to Frank -
>  > > it can be done, and it should be possible.
>  >
>  > I always thought this was an engine issue.  Shows you what I know!
>
> Joseph, your knowledge is up to date. There is no way to modify horizontal text
> dimensions in TeX in mid document, except in very restricted situations. I
> think we had these discussions before.
>
> The main restricting reasons are
>
>  - paragraph breaking and page breaking are asynconous, i.e. TeX does
>   paragraph shaping before deciding on where to place that paragraph
>
>  - you can't reformat an already broken paragraph into a different shape (as
>   the material lost on the ine breaks is not fully recoverable

Reading newlfm it seems to me as if it simply deals with changing page
dimensions in situations where pages are already complete, just like
it is possible to do so after a \clearpage in current LaTeX. Paul,
correct me if I am mistaken.

Note: The implementation in newlfm will not work (as intended) when
the calc package is loaded. To be more specific,
  \global\setlength{\hsize}{\columnwidth}%
will not do a global assignment to \hsize with calc loaded (but to an
internal variable).
-- 
Morten