🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi experts,

I can immodestly claim to be quite an experienced TeX user but have not
been able to come up with a satisfactory solution to the following problem:
I want to write a new LaTeX environment which simply ignores everything
that stands between \begin{null} ... \end{null}
[in case you are interested: this is to optionally blank out portions of a
document]. E.g.:

This is some text to appear ...
\begin{null}
Everything in this environment should not appear in the output
 ...
\end{null}

This is more text to appear ...

\begin{null}
to be ignored
\end{null}
...

The environment is not restricted to contain text only but can
indeed hold tables, figures, etc. 

In Knuth's TeXbook, p. 401 there is a trick which seems to do it:

\newenvironment{null}{\output={\setbox0=\box255\deadcycles=0}}%
{\output={}}

but it actually only works for completed pages, i.e., if the
contents of the environment fills a page partially this will appear
in any case.

Any help greatly appreciated
Uwe Lammers (ulammers@astro.estec.esa.nl)