[OS X TeX] pdfsync changes page breaks?

[Morten Høgholm]

On Sun, 09 Jul 2006 06:32:36 +0200, Ross Moore <ross at ics.mq.edu.au> wrote:

Hi all,

Just a small addition to all the wise things Ross already said:

> It takes quite tricky macro-programming to keep this to a minimum.
>
>
>> Is there some technical reason why this is not fixed, or is it that  
>> no-one has gotten around to giving it a try?
>
> The notions of hyperlinking and synchronisation are not something
> that is built-in to TeX, as primitives. These are added at the level of  
> macros,
> using those structures (such as \special ) that TeX does provide for  
> extensibility.
>
> To "fix this properly", whatever that actually means, would almost  
> certainly
> require rewriting fundamental parts of the algorithms that TeX uses for
> determining the best places for line- and page-breaks in the output.
[...]
> The nature of the "problem" is quite fundamental.

It certainly is.

The basic problem is that these things producing nodes (like \special) all  
place them in a horizontal list. The same problem happens for the color  
package. When David Carlisle presented it at a UK-TUG meeting, he had as a  
refrain, at the end of each slide: "It's not my fault!"

A solution for this is to not insert the \special etc. directly but delay  
it until actually entering horizontal mode. This is done in the  
experimental galley2 module which can be fetched from the LaTeX Project  
website (choose the CVS-part of the development code).

I'm not implying that you can just use that module as it is now for what  
is wanted here but if one inserts these markers by means of the tools  
provided in galley2, chances are that you will not get different line- abd  
pagebreaks.
-- 
Morten
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