Re: [AUCTeX-devel] Uh, what is this?

[David Kastrup]

Jan-Ake Larsson <address@hidden> writes:

> Let's try that again...
>
> David Kastrup wrote:
>> %<tightpage>  \special{!userdict 7{currentfile token not{stop}if 65781.76 
>> div }) pop}
>> 
>> The last line quite befuddles me: I can't imagine that we ever had
>> a "userdict 7 ..." string in our specials.  Would not
>> \special{!)pop} be completely sufficient here?
>
> Yes it would, except for one thing: dvipng-1.6 would complain about
> an unknown special. I inserted the string needed for detection of
> the preview-latex <= 0.9.1 tightpage option, that is "!userdict"
> followed by a string containing "7{currentfile......div", the extra
> brace is to make TeX happy. The tightpage flag inside dvipng will be
> set twice, but that is all that will happen. It is after all a
> PostScript comment.  This way, the compatibility code would not need
> extra code within dvipng, and is situated in one place only, thus
> easy to remove. But perhaps I should have documented this in the
> PostScript comment?

Something like that, yes.  The problem is maintenance: something that
looks like a bug or oversight is likely to
a) annoy people
b) be removed in the course of "cleanups" at some time.

The code is the litarary equivalent of Beuys' "Fettecke", and it will
only survive and be marveled at by having a label tagged to it.

It will still annoy people, but organized annoyance is art.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum