[XeTeX] Problems splitting double-columns in xetex

[Philip TAYLOR (Webmaster, Ret'd)]

Aha : my suspicion was correct, but Jonathan found
the error while I was still re-formatting the code !

> The ^^U and ^^V characters are the box numbers \spliteng and \splitheb respectively, and they're appearing as characters in the output because of the lines:
>
>     % split off what will fit on the page:
>     \spliteng\vsplit\engbox to \pageremaining%
>     \splitheb\vsplit\hebbox to \pageremaining%
>
> In these lines, I assume you're intending to assign the split-off portions of \engbox and \hebbox to these other box registers, but that's not actually happening as there's no \setbox command; the \split* control sequences themselves just represent the box numbers, and have to be used in conjunction with some kind of box command to actually access the registers. In this case, you probably meant to say:
>
>     \setbox\spliteng\vsplit\engbox to \pageremaining%
>     \setbox\splitheb\vsplit\hebbox to \pageremaining%
>
> JK


Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd) wrote:

> My /suspicion/ (given the odd nature of the
> intrusive glyphs) is that somewhere you are
> using the name of a box rather than its contents,
> but I am just re-formatting your source to make
> it easier for me to read ...