Elie Roux wrote:
Hello,
here is an example of some behaviours I find quite strange... It is a really short and simple example in plainTeX. It shows that if we have set \localleftbox or \localrightbox once, every line will have two more (empty) nodes. I think this behaviour is quite uncoherent, because packages (like GregorioTeX) set some \localleftbox and \localrightbox and then unsets them, so if someone wants to count the nodes of a line, this result will depend if he has a score in his document or not, even if he counts the nodes of a line that has nothing to do with a score... I think it would be better if these empty nodes were suppressed...
The problem is that you can not truly unset the \local{right,left}box because they were meant for partial use within just a few lines inside a paragraph. \localleftbox = {} just assigns an empty \hbox{}, which is not the same as nothing at all. The only way to get rid of the content is via grouping. I have options: 1. delete the empty nodes as you propose and/or make {} mean: unset it 2. switch the input syntax to \box-style format with an explicit \hbox (this has my preference) 3. do nothing Best wishes, Taco