[XeTeX] \botmark and \firstmark not working for me ...

[Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd)]

Ron Aaron wrote:

> Well, when I do an "unvbox" on the vtop which has the marks, it does work
> (that is, the marks are visible on the page).
>
> The problem though is that totally screws up the layout :(

Yes, that is to be expected, because of TeX's modes.  I wonder
whether the solution might lie in \vsplit ?  As you can take
a copy of your boxes, and then vsplit them, you might be
able to gain access to your marks that way : you would use
\box within your \line (to avoid problems with accidentally
changing mode) and access the marks through a vsplit copy
of the box{es} -- what do you think ?

** Phil.