In the messages from the tex.tex run, I got overfull box messages like the following: Overfull \hbox (12.40152pt too wide) in paragraph at lines 21018--21025 []\tenbf 836. \tenrm It is not nec-es-sary to cre-ate new ac-tive nodes hav-ing [] greater than $[] +| \hbox(6.94444+1.94444)x469.75499, glue set - 1.0, direction TLT .\whatsit ..\localinterlinepenalty=0 ..\localbrokenpenalty=0 ..\localleftbox=null ..\localrightbox=null .\tenbf 8 .\tenbf 3 .\tenbf 6 .\tenbf . .etc. That whatsit has to go. Absolutely. When the user is explicitly assigning values to \local* variables, placing a whatsit at the point of assignment is fine and expected. It is even conceivable to place a whatsit at the start of the current hlist _when_ we assign to \local* in the middle of the list. But we can't go peppering the lists with whatsits when we are not asked for it. It will break far too many existing packages. Unless we find a way to make whatsits transparent. But the combination glue whatsit glue could not preserve a whatsit when doing \skip0=\lastskip \unskip \skip1=\lastskip \unskip \vskip\skip1 \vskip\skip2 So there is -- David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum