### Why can’t I load PiCTeX?

PiCTeX is a resource hog; fortunately, most modern TeX implementations offer generous amounts of space, and most modern computers are pretty fast, so users aren’t too badly affected by its performance.

However, PiCTeX has the further unfortunate tendency to fill up TeX’s fixed-size arrays — notably the array of 256 ‘dimension’ registers. This is a particular problem when you’re using pictex.sty with LaTeX and some other packages that also need dimension registers. When this happens, you will see the TeX error message:

>     ! No room for a new \dimen.

There is nothing that can directly be done about this error: you can’t extend the number of available `\``dimen` registers without extending TeX itself. e-TeX and Omega both do this, as does MicroPress Inc’s VTeX.

It’s actually quite practical (with most modern distributions) to use e-TeX’s extended register set: use package etex (which comes with e-TeX distributions) and the allocation mechanism is altered to cope with the larger register set: PiCTeX will now load.

If you’re in some situation where you can’t use e-TeX, you need to change PiCTeX; unfortunately PiCTeX’s author is no longer active in the TeX world, so one must resort to patching. There are two solutions available.

The ConTeXt module m-pictex.tex (for Plain TeX and variants) or the corresponding LaTeX m-pictex package provide an ingenious solution to the problem based on hacking the code of `\``newdimen` itself.

Alternatively, Andreas Schell’s pictexwd and related packages replace PiCTeX with a version that uses 33 fewer `\``dimen` registers; so use pictexwd in place of pictex (either as a LaTeX package, or as a file to read into Plain TeX).

And how does one use PiCTeX anyway, given that the manual is so hard to come by? Fortunately for us all, the MathsPic system may be used to translate a somewhat different language into PiCTeX commands; and the MathsPic manual is free (and part of the distribution). MathsPic is available either as a Basic program for DOS, or as a Perl program for other systems (including Windows, nowadays).

`m-pictex.sty`
  Distributed as part of macros/context/current/cont-tmf.zip
`m-pictex.tex`
  Distributed as part of macros/context/current/cont-tmf.zip
`MathsPic`
  graphics/mathspic (gzipped tar, browse)
`pictexwd.sty`
  Distributed as part of graphics/pictex/addon (gzipped tar, browse)

This question on the Web: http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=usepictex