i really wonder why discussions always stick with one subject. discussing mime advantages might be interesting but when i scan my archives later for LaTeX journal classes finding all that stuff under this heading ... anyway Sebastian Rahtz writes: > > I looked at using it for TUGboat, but it didn't quite meet the > > requirement, since regular issues of TUGboat run articles together on > > the same page. It would work OK for proceedings issues, but they're > > Barbara Beeton has talked about this often as well, and it always > seems to founder on the rock of changing document in mid page. you > wouldnt *think* it was so hard, would you? > > Perhaps some one with a fresh mind and some time to spare should take > up the cudgels and have another crack at \includex it is not that hard but is it really worth the effort? it is hard enough :-) what you need to do is: 1) capture the exact position on the page when some \includex file ends; this means stretch and shrink etc 2) capture the content info of all internal float lists, ie type of float size etc then when you exclude some file you finish the current page (assuming that start page of your exclusion is not equal end page of your exclusion) then you start a new page in a what that you end up at exactly the point as given by 1) (which is the real hard bit and which will be wrong for a long time even after reading and reading output routine chapter in the TeX book :-) and you make sure that your info about 2) is used to replace the float lists. and this is basically it. only point is and David pointed this out already: how accurate is the result? normally what you will produce is rubbish, any or nearly any change in preceeding includes will make everything obsolete. this is bad enough with the current \include but there in most cases it does work reasonably well. but here? what do you gain? you gain processing speed as you go along since you can work from front to back and only process one include at a time (unless you have forward references which change your earlier material .... so? any takers? frank