acmfiu@serss0.fiu.edu (ACMFIU) (03/02/91)
can anyone see any possible problems with fixing TeX so that it does not refer to the tex.pool file? in order to do this, i'd just have to make TeX never call get_strings_started and everywhere there is a quoted string in TEX.WEB i'd just have to replace that with writeln()'s and then modify the screen output routines. i do not see this as a difficulty and it would make it much easier to modify TeX, rather than making a modification to the changefile and then rebuilding TeX. albert
dhosek@euler.claremont.edu (Don Hosek) (03/02/91)
In article <2703@kluge.fiu.edu>, acmfiu@serss0.fiu.edu (ACMFIU) writes: > can anyone see any possible problems with fixing TeX so that it does not > refer to the tex.pool file? > in order to do this, i'd just have to make TeX never call get_strings_started > and everywhere there is a quoted string in TEX.WEB i'd just have to replace > that with writeln()'s and then modify the screen output routines. I don't think you really want to do this; the assumptions about the string pool are embedded all over TeX. It would be a rather major undertaking. >i do not > see this as a difficulty and it would make it much easier to modify TeX, > rather than making a modification to the changefile and then rebuilding > TeX. Excuse me? Umm, are you indicating that you would rather work with the Pascal "brick" or (worse yet) web2c output? Yeesh, this has all the disadvantages of patching an executable and then some. One of the big advantages of the change file mechanism is that system-dependent changes are independent of the central file. When TeX 3.14 comes out, I can update all my change files in little more time than it takes to load them into the editor and save them. If you're messing with post-TANGLE files, well, good luck. -dh --- Don Hosek To retrieve files from ymir via the | dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu mailserver, send a message to | Quixote TeX Consulting mailserv@ymir.claremont.edu with a | 714-625-0147 line saying send [DIRECTORY]FILENAME where DIRECTORY is the FTP directory (sans "anonymous") and FILENAME is the filename, e.g. "send [tex]00readme.txt". There is a list of files in each directory under the name 00files.txt Binary files are not available by this technique.