[XeTeX] Using pst-pdf and xelatex

Ulrike Fischer news3 at nililand.de
Tue Apr 13 10:33:24 CEST 2010


Am Mon, 12 Apr 2010 14:30:54 +0100 schrieb José Carlos Santos:

> Hi all:
> 
> This is the first time that I post here and I am just starting to work
> with xe(la)tex.
> 
> What I would like to know is this: is it possible to use the pst-pdf
> package on a document which is compiled with xelatex?
> 
> If I had this document:
> 
> ---------------------- test.tex ----------------------
> \documentclass{article}
> \usepackage[nopstricks]{pst-pdf}
> \begin{document}
> Something.
> \end{document}
> ------------------------------------------------------
> 
> I could compile it using pdflatex, in order to get a PDF document. But
> if I compile it using xelatex, then the result of the presence of the
> pst-pdf package is that xelatex tries to extract the PostScrit images
> from this document. Since there are none, it creates no output. What
> should I do?

xelatex can handle eps and a lot of pstricks quite fine. So at a
first glance it looks as if you don't need something like pst-pdf.
But xelatex (more precisly: xdvipdmfx) handle the postscript by
calling ghostscript in the background to convert the graphics on the
fly during the compilation. If you have a lot of graphics/pstricks
this can slow down compilation. 

So it would be fine to have something like pst-pdf that generates
all graphics in one go in a separate document which can then be
included. pst-pdf use the preview package, and recent versions of
this package works fine with xetex:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[active,xetex,tightpage]{preview}
\begin{document}

some text not in a graphic

\begin{preview}
\fbox{some more text}
\end{preview}

\begin{preview}
a graphic
\end{preview}
\end{document}

So I don't see a principal reason why pst-pdf shouldn't work with
xetex. But it would have to be adapted first to the changed work
flow (not latex, dvips, pdflatex but xelatex + xelatex).

-- 
Ulrike Fischer 



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