Making efficient use of \writes

Question

I'm currently trying to compile my thesis using LaTeX and have run up against the old ! No room for a new \write . problem. After some googling it seems the only way to actually resolve this problem is to restructure your document to minimise the number of writes being consumed.

To that end I've been looking through the .log to find where they are all being consumed. Here's the results grepped down to those lines containing write.

\write18 enabled.
(/usr/local/texlive/2010/texmf-dist/tex/latex/rvwrite/rvwrite.sty
Package: rvwrite 2010/08/25 1.2 enhanced write registers (CVR)
Package rvwrite Warning: ****************************************
(rvwrite)                Package rvwrite v,1.2 loaded
(rvwrite)                [enhanced write registers (CVR)]
(rvwrite)                ****************************************.
\rvtwrite=\write3
\openout3 = `thesis-write.tex'.
\@glossaryfile=\write4
\@outemp=\write5
\verbatim@out=\write6
runsystem(echo 'write18-test-20114121256'>"thesis.w18")...executed.
\w@pgf@writea=\write7
\tikzexternal@outfile=\write8
\glswrite=\write9
\glo@main@file=\write10
\FV@OutFile=\write11
\@outlinefile=\write12
\tikzexternal@dep@file=\write13
\tikzexternal@outmakefile=\write14
\tf@tdo=\write15

Where have \write0, \write1 & \write2 gone? Is the use of these somehow restricted?

I'm using standard packages: algorithm2e, listings, glossaries, pgf/tikz, emp. Some of these appear quite greedy with the resources. glossaries has claimed \write4, \write9, and \write10. verbatim and fancyvrb are loaded by other packages and they claim \write6 and \write11 respectively. The worst culprit seems to be PGF/TikZ taking four writes.

My compilation breaks when LaTeX is trying to construct the Table of Contents listings. I want to make a ToC, a list of Figures, Tables, Listings, and Algorithms. At present there are no where near enough writes to do this. Does anyone have any advice about how I can control the rampant \write consumption of these packages?

How do people actually make sizable documents using LaTeX with such restrictions? Am I being unreasonable assuming I'll be able to have a 7 chapter document with a ToC, 4 listofs, index, glossary, and bibliography? Or is that beyond the resource limits of LaTeX?

Answer 1

Unfortunately there are only 16 output register in TeX and eTeX didn't expanded that number. :-(

The output registers 0, 1 and 2 are already used by (La)TeX itself, e.g. for the .log file and always open, so you don't see them in the .log file.

It's a pity that moreverb and fancyvrb consume a write register each even when you might not use the verbatim write function. If you are sure that these registers are never used you could turn back the write register counter so that these register are reassigned the next time. This can be done with \advance\count17 by -1 because the next to-be-assigned write register is stored in \count17.

Also PGF/TikZ itself only consumes one register. The other three are taken by the external library. I assume you are using it to speed up compilation, which should matter in the final compilation run. You could disable the List Of X'es during the writing process but then disable this library when you want to compile a "final" version. A good alternative to this library is the standalone class and package (written by me) where you put your TikZ pictures in external files which can be either included as source and compiled to PDF images which are then included. The upcoming version will allows to switch between both on-the-fly. It doesn't use any write register. (I really have to push the release ...)

Answer 2

morewrites – Always room for a new write stream

The pack­age aims to solve the er­ror “No room for a new \write”, which oc­curs when the user or when the user’s pack­ages have ’al­lo­cated too many streams us­ing \newwrite (TeX has a fixed max­i­mum num­ber – 16 – [of] such streams built-in to its code). The pack­age hooks into TeX prim­i­tive com­mands as­so­ci­ated with writ­ing to files; it should be loaded near the be­gin­ning of the se­quence of load­ing pack­ages for a doc­u­ment.

http://www.ctan.org/pkg/morewrites

Answer 3

Note that the TikZ external library in 'mode=list and make' (which you appear to use) will dynamically (!) allocate more write registers than the default 'mode=convert with system call'. Thus, eliminating the 'list and make' feature will automatically free at least one register.

In case you do not use \label or \ref in your tikz images, you can also use '\tikzexternalize[aux in dpth=false]' to de-activate support for \label and \ref. This will free a further write register (if I am not mistaken, pgf 2.10 also allocates it on-demand).

I have just committed a couple of changes to PGF CVS which allow more control over the used write registers of the externalization. Now, the registers used by the image externalization process are allocated on-demand if that is possible. Furthermore, the new version has a key '\tikzexternalize[disable dependency files]' which disables generation of .dep file dependencies -- freeing one more register at the cost of no longer being able to remake figures if data files changed.

I hope this helps - at least in the future.

Answer 4

I slapped together a quick patch to replace the \newwrites in TikZ with calls to Lua's IO library:

https://gist.github.com/925047

git://gist.github.com/925047.git

It's definitely amateur work---for example, I managed to break the makefile output as the commands required to build targets are missing. However, running a file with:

\tikzexternalize[mode=convert with system call]

Appears to be working fine and all of the images generated look ok. The patch was made against PGF 2.10 and will require that lualatex -shell-escape be used to compile the file. Hopefully this will free up 4 write streams for other purposes.

If someone who actually knows what they are doing when it comes to TeX programming has improvements to contribute, fork or comment away!

Update

---

I updated the patch and fixed a few dumb mistakes -- one of which was breaking the Makefile output. So, the following should work now:

\tikzexternalize[mode=list and make]

Answer 5

morewrites works indeed to remove the error ! No room for a new \write but it broke the TOC and all "List of *" for me. I ended up using scrwfile instead (with \usepackage{scrwfile}).