[XeTeX] \special{papersize=...} broken in xelatex? (v0.994a)

Jonathan Kew jonathan_kew at sil.org
Fri Jun 9 22:49:41 CEST 2006


On 9 Jun 2006, at 9:38 pm, Peter Dyballa wrote:

>
> Am 09.06.2006 um 20:53 schrieb Stephen Moye:
>
>> I have just confirmed that what worked in xelatex .99b no longer
>> seems to work in 0.994a -- or do I have to enable something before
>> it does? I tried things like
>>
>> \special{papersize=5.5in,8.5in}
>
> I think this could explain: the \special{} worked because before
> XeTeX 0.994 xdv2pdf on Mac OS X was taking it off the XDV file, and
> now we have to either use the geometry package instead or set
> \pdfpagewidth and \pdfpageheight accordingly. Both are cleaner than
> driver specifics, that can come and go ...

The size still has to get passed from the document to the driver via  
the XDV file, whether you use \special{papersize} or \pdfpagewidth  
etc. (Or a package like geometry, which must end up doing one of  
these things internally.)

And in fact, xetex still uses a papersize \special behind the scenes  
to pass the \pdfpagewidth and \pdfpageheight settings to the driver!  
Until we have real integration with the PDF generation process (i.e.,  
merge with pdftex, or something like that), that's how it has to be.

So I don't understand why the \special isn't working for Stephen; it  
seems to work for me.

JK



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