[XeTeX] unexpected DVI command: -1

[Jonathan Kew]

On 3 Sep 2004, at 7:30 am, Robert Voogdgeert wrote:

> Dear XeTeX-users,
>
>
> I could use some help on the following error message:
>
> *** unexpected DVI command: -1
> Segmentation fault
>
> Can any of you tell what it means and what it's cause might be?
>

What version/build of Mac OS X are you running, and what type of Mac? 
I've seen this occasionally under pre-release versions of OS X updates, 
but I don't think I've ever seen it on a final release version. Does it 
happen with one particular document, or all documents? Can you try it 
on another machine?

This seems to me like it must be an OS X bug, but I have been unable to 
narrow it down to a small, reproducible test case and file a useful bug 
report. I believe what's happening is a problem with the "pipe" that 
xetex uses to send its output to the xdv2pdf tool. To confirm this, try 
typesetting the problem document from the Terminal in two stages; first 
generate an .xdv file and then convert that to .pdf:
	% xetex -no-pdf mydoc.tex       # or xelatex, if appropriate
	% xdv2pdf mydoc.xdv
I'm guessing this will work properly, yet "direct-to-pdf" typesetting 
(which runs the exact same tools, just using a Unix pipe to connect 
them instead of writing the .xdv to disk) will still fail (from the 
Terminal as well as from TeXShop or other front-end).

I'd love to isolate this so that it can be fixed in xetex (if that's 
possible) or reported to Apple; any more details you can give about 
your exact setup would be helpful. Thanks!

Jonathan