Re: distributed / parallel TeX?

[Lars Huttar <lars_huttar@sil.org>]

On 12/16/2008 3:31 PM, Martin Schröder wrote:
> 2008/12/16 Lars Huttar <lars_huttar@sil.org>:
>> - You could design your document *specifically* to make the parts
>> independent, so that the true and authoritative way to typeset them is
>> to typeset the parts independently. (You can do this part now without
>> modifying TeX at all... you just have the various sections' .tex files
>> input common "headers" / macro defs.) Then, by definition, a change in
>> one section cannot affect another section (except for page numbers, and
>> possibly left/right pages, q.v. below).
> 
> True. Also with TeX if your paragraphs are independent of each other
> (i.e. they don't include references to others), they could the typeset
> in parallel and then handed over to the page builder.

Good point... although doesn't the page optimization feed back into
paragraph layout?

>> - Most large works are divisible into chunks separated by page breaks
>> and possibly page breaks that force a "recto". This greatly limits the
>> effects that any section can have on another. The division ("chunking")
>> of the whole document into fairly-separate parts could either be done
>> manually, or if there are clear page breaks, automatically.
> 
> pdfTeX 1.50 knows about the page diversions (analogue to m4's divert
> and undivert). They have a lot of potential.

Sounds useful. It's impressive if you can get "a correct table of
contents in the first run" (says
http://www.gust.org.pl/BachoTeX/2008/presentations/ms/handout.pdf)

>> page number of each page reference. If pagination has changed, or is
>> new, this info is sent back to the various nodes for another round of
>> processing.
> 
> Hopefully stopping at some point. If you use something like varioref,
> you can end with infinite circles. :-)

But this is just a problem of typesetting with TeX in general, not
particular to parallel/distributed typesetting, right?
IIRC, Knuth even says in the TeXbook that a really pathological case
might never stabilize.

Lars
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