[XeTeX] Re: [MacTeX] XeTeX

[Ross Moore]

On 14/04/2004, at 10:24 PM, Jonathan Kew wrote:

> Thanks for this, Ross; yes, I see the same results you do, and clearly 
> something's wrong. Hope to look into it soon; I'll let you know when I 
> have a fixed version to try. It's pretty amazing that any math works 
> at all, considering this!

Well, for me the math does not work at all.
Rather, the CM fonts don't work; as yet I don't know why.
It may have something to do with my teTeX file-structure,
but there's no -debug tracing in  xdv2pdf  so I cannot tell
where it is actually looking for the .otf fonts.


>
> By the way, what happens if you try this with Omega?

Same as  tex, etex, pdftex, etc.


> And I'll see if I can do anything about the bloated PDFs that are 
> generated when you use CM fonts, as someone reported. To some extent, 
> I think this is an Apple issue, as the xdv2pdf tool generates PDF by 
> simply imaging with the Quartz engine to a PDF destination. But I may 
> be able to improve how it behaves.



> I'm also painfully aware of the need for documentation, installer 
> improvements, etc.; this is only a beginning. Glad to see there are 
> people interested in it.

Sure.
I'd like to help get XeTeX fully working with LaTeX first,
then ultimately extend the math-capabilities to be able
to use Unicode code-points for greek letters and math-symbols,
the forth-coming STIX font encodings, and such-like.


These are the problems that I've encountered so far:

   1.  \mathcode  (as above)

   2.  lack of tracing in  xdv2pdf  (mentioned above)

   3.  cannot create a fresh working  xetex.xfmt  from  plain.tex
       (so that it preloads .tfm file locations from my installation)

      Here's what happens when I try to use such a locally \dump'd 
format:

  [glenlivet: XeTeX samples] rossmoor% xetex CM-test.tex
This is XeTeXk, Version 3.14159-2.1-0.3 (Web2C 7.5.2)
  %&-line parsing enabled.
(./CM-test.tex [1*** malloc: vm_allocate(size=2584555520) failed (error 
code=3)
*** malloc[28133]: error: Can't allocate region
fatal: memory exhausted (xmalloc of 2584553356 bytes).
[glenlivet: XeTeX samples] rossmoor% bad XDV file: DVI_PRE not found, 
b=-1


   4.  fclose: Bad file descriptor   problem.  (Is this just cosmetic ?)

        When \dump-ing the format in 3. this happens for
              cmr5.tfm  cmmi5.tfm  cmbf5.tfm
        (but not cmsy5.tfm or for any other design-sizes).

        With LaTeX jobs it happens for some .fd files and .tfm files,
        in particular whem AMS packages are loaded.


   5.  lack of driver-support for color
          (this has been mentioned previously)
        Is color part of the AAT interface ?
        If so, then this shouldn't be too hard to do.
        But there also needs to be color for non-AAT constructs.


   6.  lack of driver-support for active hyperlinks
        Preview.app supports hyperlinks in Panther, but TeXshop does not.
        Surely there are some APIs for this now.


   7.  support for  scaling/rotations/clipping etc. of imported graphics.
        How much of the \includegraphics  from  graphicx.sty
        can be supported, for a  xetex.def  driver file ?



Given an interface via  \special syntax, I can write appropriate
driver files:  xetex.def   (for color/graphics)
           and  hxetex.def  (for hyperref)



Cheers,

	Ross


>
> Jonathan
>
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ross Moore                                         ross at maths.mq.edu.au
Mathematics Department                             office: E7A-419
Macquarie University                               tel: +61 +2 9850 8955
Sydney, Australia                                  fax: +61 +2 9850 8114
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