On Fri, Nov 30, 2001 at 05:00:51PM +0100, Andre Poenitz wrote: > On Fri, Nov 30, 2001 at 05:00:01PM +0100, Lars Gullik Bjønnes wrote: > > | That is my belief. Although, when you care about these things, I've > > | always thought a naming scheme like u32int is better style. > > > > So how many mm can a 32 bits int measured in sp span? > > 2^16 points = 2^16/72 inches = 23.1 meters if I am not mistaken...
In actual fact TeX only uses 30 bits of the int. (I think the other two may be used for TeX's three infinities, fil, fill and fill, but I'm not sure). So TeX's maximum legal dimension is actually 2^14 sp which is 18.892 feet or 5.7583 meters, according to Knuth [TeXBook p58]. You can hack with the 'magnification' parameter if you want to typeset bigger documents. Jules PS Andre, your mail-followup-to is right now!
