[texhax] current position in output

[Uwe Lück]

Intending clarification of the most important aspect of Reinhard's 
criticism of using \pagetotal [just sport]:

At 05:08 28.12.08, Reinhard Kotucha wrote:
>tom sgouros writes:
>  > I don't know if you'll get the precision you seem to be looking for, but
>  > you should try playing with \pagetotal,
[...]
>The only reasonable solution is what Martin proposed.
[pdfTeX]
>Everything else is inaccurate and unreliable and not worth to consider.

At 05:48 28.12.08, Reinhard Kotucha wrote:
>tom sgouros writes:
>
>  > \the\pagetotal\the\pagegoal
>  >
>  > \the\pagetotal\the\pagegoal
>  >
>  > \the\pagetotal\the\pagegoal
>
>This is useless.  Put these commands into paragraphs containing text,
>one near the beginning and one near the end of each paragraph and see
>what happens when a page break occurs.

While processing input not containing any \par, the expansion of 
\the\pagetotal won't change [1]. So e.g., if you have an author like 
Heinrich von Kleist where a sentence may fill more than a page (f. Exercise 
14.15 in the TeXbook) \the\pagetotal may expand to `0pt' all over the page. 
This means that \the\pagetotal may not give any clue as to the vertical 
position on the page. Rather it will just indicate the vertical position at 
which the previous paragraph ended.

Cheers,

     Uwe

____________________________
[1]
\begin{document}
\newcommand{\ohmydear}{%
   Oh my dear! Oh my dear! Oh my dear! Oh my dear! Oh my dear!
   Oh my dear! Oh my dear! Oh my dear! Oh my dear! Oh my dear!
   \the\pagetotal\space}
\ohmydear \ohmydear \ohmydear \ohmydear \ohmydear
\end{document}