Re: PDF build issue with 9.0 Alpha5

Devrim =?ISO-8859-1?Q?G=DCND=DCZ?= <devrim(at)gunduz(dot)org> writes:
> I was trying to build PDF docs for 9.0 Alpha5, and I got this message:

> ! TeX capacity exceeded, sorry [number of strings=245830].

> I checked texmf.cnf, and all values match the ones that are defined in
> our docs. Which setting should I increase? Please note that Alpha4 PDF
> was built successfully on the same machine (an up2date Fedora 12).

This looks rather nasty. As best I can tell, there is a hard limit on
max_strings of 2^18; setting max_strings to more than that in texmf.cnf
does nothing. Changing this would require modifying internal data
representations inside TeX. That seems well beyond what anybody is
going to be willing to do to build the PG docs.

As a short-term expedient to get some alpha5 RPMs built, you could
disable generation of the index (remove "-i include-index" from
JADE.tex.call).

For an actual fix, it looks like we have got three alternatives:

* find out what's chewing up so many strings and get rid of it.

* break the manual into separate TeX documents (losing the ability to
cross-reference).

* abandon TeX-based document output path.

regards, tom lane