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From: eijkhout@s41.csrd.uiuc.edu (Victor Eijkhout)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: odd LaTeX problem
Message-ID: <1991Feb15.193207.1168@csrd.uiuc.edu>
Date: 15 Feb 91 19:32:07 GMT
References: <1991Feb15.042818.7260@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz>
Sender: news@csrd.uiuc.edu (news)
Organization: UIUC Center for Supercomputing Research and Development
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russell@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Russell J Fulton;ccc032u) writes:

>I am converting a moderately complex document from Washington State's 
>TEXT1 package to LaTeX. (It is the documentation for the IPA fonts, if
>anybody already has done this can I have it please!)

>Anyway about halfway through the document (after processing 15 pages) 
>LaTeX stops at the start of a paragraph with

>! missing \begin{document}

I can guess...

This message comes from somehting like

\everypar{\ComplainAboutMissingBeginDocument}
\def\begindocument{\everypar{\SomethingHarmless} ...

which causes an error message if you have text before
the \begin{document}. Now what probably happens, is that
some of your macros (the other packages that you include)
redefine \everypar, and this interferes with LaTeX's workings.

This is a problem, and not really easy to solve. It needs
extensive rewriting of parts of LaTeX, or of your macros.

Victor.