Re: Length specs getting mangled in TeX output

[Matt Gushee <mgushee@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Norman Walsh writes:

 > / Matt Gushee <mgushee@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> was heard to say:
 > | 	16pt        becomes:        {16\p@}
 > 
 > Is it causing problems? I've forgotten the details (it's in the
 > TeXBook somewhere), but defining macros for units of measure
 > makes some calculations go faster or use less memory or
 > something, so \p@ is 1pt and 16\p@ is 16pt.
 > 
 > This should be the tex backend, right ? 
 > 16\p@ is the LaTeX way of saving a bit of macro space and execution time 
 > compared to 16pt (16\p@ is three tokens, while 16pt is four tokens...)

Thanks for the quick and helpful responses! I didn't *really* think it 
was a bug ... if it were, it would be an awfully big one for everybody 
to have overlooked.

It turns out that I did something to disable the \p@ macro, but I'm
not sure what. I have written a wrapper for jadetex.ltx to enable CJK
language processing. It \inputs jadetex.ltx, adds a few macros, and
redefines a few others. If I run an all-English file based on the same 
DSSSL code through regular JadeTeX, it comes out just fine.

How about this? I've made my project materials available on the Web
and will be posting an announcement to dssslist shortly. If those who
are interested in Asian languages would be so kind as to download it
and examine my cjk-jdtx.ltx, I'd greatly appreciate it. In the
meantime, I have a guess as to what might be causing the
problem. Could it be this?

%% Language definitions
\def\L@{}
%% I wonder if I want all these deactivates, since the CJK
%% environment can incorporate western-language text.
%% Turning it off might cause problems.
\def\L@US{\CJKdeactivate\selectlanguage{english}}
\def\L@FR{\CJKdeactivate\selectlanguage{francais}}
		:
		:
		V
\def\L@CY{\CJKdeactivate\selectlanguage{welsh}}
%% CJK-specific language defs
\def\L@JA{%
	\cjkdoctrue%
	\def\CJKDocEncoding{JIS}%
	\def\CJKFontEncoding{}%
	\def\CJKDefaultFont{min}%
	\let\CJKFont = \CJKDefaultFont%
	\CJKactivate{\CJKFontEncoding}{\CJKDocEncoding}{\CJKFont}
	}
\def\L@CN{}
\def\L@KR{}

I have to admit I don't really understand LaTeX well enough to be
messing with this stuff. It's just that nobody else was doing it.

Matt Gushee
Portland, Maine, USA
mgushee@xxxxxxxxxxxxx


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