[XeTeX] XeTeX and arbitrary page sizes?

[Jonathan Kew]

On 22 Apr 2004, at 10:29 am, Stephen Moye wrote:

> I need to put something on a page generally called half-letter: 5.5in 
> by
> 8.5in. How can I tell XeTeX to do this? The -papersize=legal:landscape
> option works like a charm, by the way.
>

You should be able to say "-papersize=w,h", where w,h are the width and 
height you want, in "big" points. So you'd want -papersize=396,612. Let 
me know if it doesn't work; don't think I've tried this lately!

> One other, perhaps slightly frivolous, question: How is `XeTeX' 
> pronounced?
> I start to tell people about it and am stopped dead in my tracks when I
> attempt to say its name. The embarrassment is more than I can 
> stand...;>}
>

Good question!

Personally, I pronounce the name as if it were "zee-TeX"; the "X" as 
"z" by analogy with things like xenon, xylophone, etc., and the "e" 
long rather than short just because that's what seems to sound right to 
me. Of course, the "e" is really supposed to be a lowered backwards 
"E", giving a nice symmetry to the name; I have no idea what that would 
represent phonetically! Unfortunately, not many fonts yet include Ǝ 
(U+018E, LATIN CAPITAL LETTER REVERSED E).

Does the name mean anything? Only that it's an OS X extension of e-TeX, 
and I rather liked the bidirectional effect. :-)

Jonathan