[XeTeX] a few questions XeLaTeX and Beamer

Will Robertson will at guerilla.net.au
Fri Mar 10 06:57:24 CET 2006


On 10/03/2006, at 9:54 , Peter Dyballa wrote:

> Bruno Voisin wrote in October that it's probably not possible to  
> make PGF XeTeX compatible:
>
>> Regarding the pgf package (where pgf stands, ironically enough,  
>> for "Portable Graphics Format"), I have been having a quick look  
>> at pgf.sty. Sure enough, it can't work with XeTeX. There are only  
>> two options, one, [pdf], producing PDF output and using  
>> instructions like:

I just looked into PGF recently and it really is impressive. The  
whole point of the thing is that the backends it uses are written  
specially per driver to enable the same front-end interface no matter  
what sort of documents you're creating. There's even an SVG output,  
if I read correctly (perhaps only the possibility is there).

I don't know if XeTeX's drawing capabilities are up to scratch for  
writing the PGF backend for XeTeX. Jonathan...can XeTeX draw things  
with Quartz? Or would it be possible to? I guess this would be a  
matter for the dvipdfmx changes you had in mind.

In summary, it's not an issue with no solution, like PSTricks. It's  
just a matter of putting in the hard work of writing the driver file.  
And perhaps adding the necessary drawing primitives to xdv2pdf.

Cheers,

Will



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