[tex-k] Subroutine calls in Pascal (in DVItype)

[Karl Berry]

    minimize overhead for a function call?

He's using 7 separate functions to avoid passing an argument to a
generic function that would specify how much to read as an argument.
That parameter would be copied to/from the call stack every time there
is a read from the dvi file.

Quite a micro-optimization, even for 1978.  He doesn't say so, but I
surmise his intuition was happier writing "signed_trio" than
"signed_read(3)" or some such. Just a speculation ... -k