[XeTeX] XeTeX 0.994 for Mac OS X

[Mojca Miklavec]

On 6/6/06, Jonathan Kew wrote:
> On 6 Jun 2006, at 6:25 pm, Ralf Stubner wrote:
>
> >> - pdfTeX-style \pdfpageheight and \pdfpagewidth parameters to control
> >> page size
> >
> > This causes a problem with geometry.sty (2002/07/08 v3.2 Page
> > Geometry)
> > which checks for a running pdftex via
> >
> >   \ifx\pdfpagewidth\@undefined\else
> >     \ifnum\pdfoutput=\@ne
> >       \Gm at setdriver{pdftex}%
> >     \fi
> >   \fi

Why can't a package simply check if pdftexversion is defined instead
of checking if pdfpagewidth is defined? (Of course years ago it didn't
make much difference since no other TeX had \pdfpagewidth defined.)

> Hmm... is that the current "standard" way to test for pdfTeX? If so,
> that could disrupt quite a few packages. (You can tell I'm not much
> of a LaTeX user!)
>
> > No idea how to solve this best.
>
> Well, packages can detect XeTeX by testing for \XeTeXversion. But
> they'd have to test this *before* checking for pdfTeX in that way.
>
> An alternative would be to change the names of these primitives in
> XeTeX, making them \XeTeXpagewidth, etc., and then leave it up to
> package/driver writers to say \let\pdfpagewidth=\XeTeXpagewidth,
> etc., if they want to share some supporting code.

That would make much more other packages more difficult to maintain.

> Comments/suggestions welcome... this isn't "set in stone" by any
> means, I'm open to ideas...

In my opinion XeTeX['s author] did it's job. It's the geometry package
the one which should be fixed.

Mojca