[tex-live] No room for a new \write

[Heiko Oberdiek]

On Sat, Mar 17, 2007 at 01:03:09PM +0000, Jonathan Kew wrote:

> On 17 Mar 2007, at 11:58 am, Frank Küster wrote:
> 
> >Taco Hoekwater <taco at elvenkind.com> wrote:
> >
> >>I don't think I have ever seen an example where there was a serious
> >>need for more than 16 read or write allocators. I would like to  
> >>see an
> >>actual example of a document with no programming errors and with no
> >>excessively sloppy handling of resources that still needs more than
> >>16 distinct read or write handles (simultaneously or sequentially).
> >>
> >>I presume such a document is possible, but until I see a practical
> >>example, I am very reluctant to support/do a change to eTeX.
> >
> >I would have to dig through the archives, but I think I remember an
> >example in de.comp.text.tex, and if I'm not mistaken it used a
> >combination of various packages, one of which writes one file per
> >chapter for chapterwise TOC, LOF, LOT.  4 chapters with three such  
> >files
> >each gives already 12 files (sequentially),
> 
> That gives 12 files, yes. But there's no reason for it to use 12  
> \write streams. Just close the streams at end of chapter, and re-open  
> with new filenames for the next. So 3 streams are enough for such a  
> package to handle any number of chapters, even without interleaving  
> the records in a single file and then distinguishing them as they're  
> re-read later.

Last year I have analyzed a complaint:

  From: Heiko Oberdiek <oberdiek at uni-freiburg.de>
  Newsgroups: de.comp.text.tex
  Subject: Re: \write16 nicht möglich
  Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 22:03:23 +0100
  Message-ID: <dtl7un$krr$1 at news.BelWue.DE>

| LaTeX: 3 writes (0-3) \@unused, \@mainaux, \@partaux
| fancybox: 1 write (3)
| multibib: 6 writes (4-9) \newcites{one, ..., six}
| minitoc: 1 write (10)
| multind: 1 write (11) \makeindex{total}
| hyperref: 1 write (12) \@outlinefile
| graphics/pdftex.def/supp-mis.tex: 1 write (13)
| toc, lof, lot: 3 writes (14-16)

The number of write streams don't depend on the number of chapters.
More write streams are possible: He was using just one index,
more indexes are possible with multind, there could be a
list of listings and so on.

Yours sincerely
  Heiko <oberdiek at uni-freiburg.de>