Bugs item #752, was opened at 2007-04-03 14:50 You can respond by visiting: http://sarovar.org/tracker/?func=detail&atid=493&aid=752&group_id=106 Category: Primitives Group: v1.30.0 Status: Closed Resolution: Fixed Priority: 5 Submitted By: Martin Schröder (oneiros) Assigned to: Martin Schröder (oneiros) Summary: nc/nd broken Initial Comment: David Kastrup reports this: ------------------------ **\dimen0=1nc *\showthe\dimen0

12.80373pt. <*> \showthe\dimen0

? *\dimen0=0.99998nc *\showthe\dimen0

-0.09723pt. <*> \showthe\dimen0

? This does not cut it at all. The section in tex.web starts with @ The necessary conversion factors can all be specified exactly as fractions whose numerator and denominator are 32768 or less. In LuaTeX, the section brazenly starts with @ The necessary conversion factors can all be specified exactly as fractions whose numerator and denominator are 65535 or less. Who does things like that without actually checking that they work? It is possible to rework the arithmetic to get along with 65535, but it is certainly not a matter of merely changing the _documentation_ and not the code. I have no idea whether this is an eTeX, a PDFTeX, an Aleph or a LuaTeX invention (did I forget anything?), but it certainly can't stay like that. Sorry if I sound like a whiner here. If you think it worth the trouble, I can rework the arithmetic (but there is a reason that Knuth kept to 15 bit factors, so it is going to become more complicated). But I consider it more likely that nc should be changed to 1370:107 which is the closest 15 bit fraction to 12nd (it is smaller than 12nd, but the next larger suitable fraction 32163:2512 is slightly further from 12nd). Please remember that in TeX, 2in is not equal to 1in+1in anyway. I think we can afford this. Certainly better than the current behavior. ------------------------ He tested it with luaTeX, but the bug is already in pdftex. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Comment By: Nobody (None) Date: 2007-04-04 12:07 Message: Logged In: NO Unfortunately, Knuth's original comment is _also_ wrong. The _sum_ of numerator and denominator must not exceed 32768. So the conversion ratio for nd is _also_ incorrect, as can be witnessed by checking the value 9.99998nd. Changing the ratio to 685:642 would reconstitute the relation 12nd=1nc. The closest approximation for nd that works with the code would be 11183:10481. However, we are talking about differences in the order of 1e-7, so the ratio with the simpler relation to nc might be preferable. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Comment By: Martin Schröder (oneiros) Date: 2007-04-03 15:13 Message: Logged In: YES user_id=421 A patch is attached; this will be included in the next release. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can respond by visiting: http://sarovar.org/tracker/?func=detail&atid=493&aid=752&group_id=106