Cornelius C. Noack <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Mon, 9 Jul 2007, Jean-Pierre Coulon wrote:
>
> > Daniel Taupin's last versions of the MusiXTeX documentation
> > discouraged making large scores under LaTeX, because of the lack
> > of 'registers' - Don's version is in a milder tone. Yet I
> > managed to make a large score under LaTeX with the
> > 1995 EMTeX distribution.
> >
> > Nothing wrong happened. I use quite a few \def commands. What is
> > meant by a 'TeX register'? I've made a "three pass" batch file
> > similar to the
> > manual's MUSIXTEX.BAT to have musixflx make the right spacings.
> >
> > Are these warnings against using LaTeX true, or a myth? The LaTeX
> > source of the MusiXTeX manual contains "I hate LaTeX" somewhere.
> >
> > My source file is too big for this list (200K).
>
> The warnings against LaTeX were true when Taupin first wrote
> MusixTeX; nowadays (2007!) most of them have indeed become a myth.
> To be more specific: the limited number of 'registers'
> ('registers' in this context is simply a name for TeX-specific
> memory slots for things like TeX command names etc. -- for details
> cf. the TeXbook)
no: registers are things like boxes, counters, lengths and the like. in
knuth's original code, there were a maximum of 256 of each; in e-tex
65535 are available. it was always easy to run out of registers in
original tex -- pictex was a good candidate for that; it wasn't just
musixtex.
the issue about numbers of command names and the total size of macro
bodies, etc., is solvable in knuth's tex -- as witness you managing a
large document in bigtex under emtex.
> are no longer a problem with present TeX
> implementations such as 'extended TeX' (which is now the default
> for MikTeX, e.g.). There is, however, quite a number of TeX
> commands that are redefined in LaTeX, and this can lead to some
> incompatibilities. For some more detail on the whole question cf.
> my PMX tutorial
> http://icking-music-archive.org/software/pmx/pmxccn.pdf ,
> Ch. C 4: ''PMX and LaTeX'' .
you might mention etex.sty in your document; it's what makes those extra
registers available to the ordinary programmer.
> Quite another issue seems to be, IMHO, the "I hate LaTeX" issue.
> Hate is a very personal thing, and usually there is nothing you
> can do about it. The ideosyncrasies are, to my mind, quite
> analogous to those between GUI and mouse tick lovers on the one
> side, and aficionados of the command-line way of running computers
> ...
>
> Let's try to keep the MusixTeX world free from useless fights of
> that kind!
hear! hear!
(personally, i would like to see musixtex silently "just work" with
plain tex, latex, or context. that will of course include hacking
around with various bits and pieces, notably font selection. iirc,
daniel's font selection code was enough to make any ordinary programmer
wince -- has it been replaced yet?)
robin
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