[XeTeX] unexpected DVI command: -1

Bruno Voisin bvoisin at mac.com
Fri Sep 3 18:36:39 CEST 2004


Le 3 sept. 04, à 12:17, Robert Voogdgeert a écrit :

> I'm working on a Powerbook G4 550Mhz running MacOS 10.3.5. Typesetting 
> on another (newer) powerbook G4 resulted in more or less the same 
> message:
>
> *** bad XDV file: DVI_PRE not found, b=-1
> Segmentation fault

I have just been faced with this very same message for the first time, 
straight after downloading and installing v0.85. I worked on a reduced 
test case, for which the console output gets as short as this:

> This is XeTeXk, Version 3.14159-2.1-0.85 (Web2C 7.5.2)
>  %&-line parsing enabled.
> entering extended mode
> (./xjfm4.tex
> LaTeX2e <2001/06/01>
> Babel <v3.7h> and hyphenation patterns for american, british, french, 
> german, n
> german, nohyphenation, loaded.
> (/usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.tetex/tex/latex/base/article.cls
> Document Class: article 2001/04/21 v1.4e Standard LaTeX document class
> (/usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.tetex/tex/latex/base/size10.clo)) 
> (./xjfm4.aux)
> [1]*** bad XDV file: DVI_PRE not found, b=-1
> Segmentation fault

Jonathan, I'm mailing you this test file separately.

The error seems to be absolutely unrelated to the exact content of the 
file TeXwise: the file compiles OK in LaTeX; switching to XeLaTeX, I 
get the above error. If I comment out everything in the file starting 
from a certain point, XeLaTeX'ing goes well; if I start commenting out 
ten characters further, with only 7-bit ASCII Roman letters and a "," 
in between, I get the error.

There only seems to be one thing systematic about this error: it 
happens only with the default CM/AMS fonts. If I switch to any other 
font for text, for example by selecting Trebuchet MS as I reported 
earlier on this list, all goes well; if I use the LaTeX packages times 
or lucidabr, similarly, to switch to the Times or Lucida Bright/NewMath 
fonts, all goes well too (except that I can't see the characters in the 
output, XeTeX having no access to fonts in .pfa format).

HTH,

Bruno Voisin

PS I have checked in Font Book that my Classic CM/AMS fonts from 
Textures are indeed disabled, so that XeTeX shouldn't be affected by 
them, I think.



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