[tex4ht] [bug #618] Incomplete XML Document, domfilter error, truncated build on large file.

[William F Hammond]

Hi Karl!

You write:

Hi Nasser - it turns out the problem is simple: DVI format only supports
65,536 pages -- the postamble item that reports the total number of
pages is two bytes (t[2] as shown on for example, page 12 of
dvitype.pdf).

How does dvitype know the actual number of pages?

I've never thought much about TeX, the program.  I assume that some variant
(luatex, was it?) of that program decided to write pgs mod 2^16 in the
postamble item when pgs >= 2^16 rather write (2^16)-1 -- or perhaps 0 for
"ignore me" -- and yell loudly.   Is that a feature?  :-)

What would groff, which also can write DVI, have done with a document
having more than 2^16 pages?

         -- Bill


William F Hammond
Email: gellmu at gmail.com
https://www.facebook.com/william.f.hammond
http://www.albany.edu/~hammond/

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒔𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒂 𝒅𝒆𝒎𝒐𝒄𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒚 𝒊𝒔 𝒃𝒆𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒆 𝒊𝒕
𝒊𝒔 𝒍𝒐𝒔𝒕.   -- 𝐊𝐞𝐧 𝐁𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐬




On Sun, Dec 17, 2023 at 10:03 AM Karl Berry <karl at freefriends.org> wrote:

> Hi Nasser - it turns out the problem is simple: DVI format only supports
> 65,536 pages -- the postamble item that reports the total number of
> pages is two bytes (t[2] as shown on for example, page 12 of
> dvitype.pdf).
>
> Your document is larger than that, namely 74193 pages. That's why tex4ht
> (the binary) quits at page 8657 (total_pages mod 65536).
>
> TeX itself does not check when it is outputting such a semi-corrupt dvi,
> although dvitype reports it, even at level 0 (minimal) output:
>
> $ dvitype -output-level 0 report.dvi >r0
> $ grep really r0
> there are really 74193 pages, not 8657!
>
> I cannot imagine any feasible way to change this limit. So you'll have
> to arrange your workflow to keep your files smaller than that, as far as
> I can see.
>
> I'll ask Luigi about changing luatex to emit an error if there are more
> than 2^16 pages in dvi mode. As far as I can see, there's no use in
> creating such a dvi. --best, karl.
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://tug.org/pipermail/tex4ht/attachments/20231217/3b37d834/attachment.htm>