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[Jonathan Fine]

Philip wrote:

I still do not understand why anything more than "TeX out of the box" is
> required.
>

This is a statement of fact, that I don't wish to dispute. However, I think
the question is being discussed on the basis of good taste and being
sensible. And that much depends on the context, and the preferences, skills
and opinions of those who create and support the production system.

I fear that there are many problems in having TeX increment a counter that
has a significance across the whole system. For example, what if producing
the report requires several typesetting runs.

One could program TeX to maintain a database, much like AWK can be so
programmed. And what we have here is a database of sorts. The 'requirement'
to use something other than TeX arises from things outside TeX, namely the
system that holds the data that is to be typeset.

-- 
Jonathan
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