Re: Version 3.32 of Lout now available

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

address@hidden (Jeff Kingston) writes:

> Version 3.32 of the Lout document formatting system is now available,
> from the usual place:

Thanks a lot!

>    "-r" command line option, e.g. -r3 runs Lout three times

This one looks interesting.  However, I just tried it, and most of the
work (parsing AFM files, parsing Lout definition files, parsing the
document itself, etc.) is done exactly the number of times specified
with `-r'.  The only difference compared to running `lout' 3 times "by
hand" is that the resulting PostScript file itself is only written once
(thanks to the new `NullBackend's).

I ran `lout -r3' within `strace' which confirmed this.  Additionally, on
my example, the temporary `.ld' file was opened 198 times on those 3
runs, and the `.li' file was open 6 times.

Is there a chance we could achieve something similar to what I proposed
in [0]?  That is, (i) make sure we don't parse all these files more than
once, (ii) don't issue `.ld' and `.li' files (except maybe at the end or
when processing is interrupted) and (iii) keep Lout running until there
are no pending unresolved cross references and untransferred galleys.

Of course, item (iii) may be problematic because in some cases (e.g.,
when address@hidden' is on) Lout may end up running in an infinite loop.
However, this could be worked around, for instance, by specifying with
`-r' the maximum number of iterations to be performed.

Thanks,
Ludovic.

[0] http://lists.planix.com/pipermail/lout-users/2005q1/003905.html