[XeTeX] XeLaTeX generated pdf metadata

[mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca]

On Sat, 20 Sep 2014, Daniel Greenhoe wrote:
> I think my original email was not so clear. ArXiv.org of course
> accepts papers generated using LaTeX, but they want to be given the
> source files (.tex files, etc) rather than a pdf file. However, they
> apparently sometimes make exceptions to this rule if the pdf file was
> generated using XeTeX/XeLaTeX rather than LaTeX. That is, they *may*
> in at least some cases accept a pdf generated by XeLaTeX, but will
> *not* accept a pdf generated by LaTeX.

This is a big issue for anyone who wants to submit papers containing CJK
text.  It's impractical to compile the papers with LaTeX (though that is
what I've been forced to do, with a lot of font tomfoolery along the way);
arXiv won't accept XeTeX output because they want the source instead; but
arXiv also won't accept and compile the XeTeX source.

It seems to me that the best thing would be for arXiv to install XeTeX and
accept XeTeX source.  But I wish I also had control over the metadata in
my XeTeX-generated files - not to "clearly indicate" it's from XeTeX but
to remove any trace of TeX at all.  It's really none of arXiv's business
what software I use, especially when they insist upon, but then reject,
perfectly good XeTeX source code.

Note that LaTeX is a macro package that runs on top of an engine like
XeTeX.  Properly speaking, most documents made with XeTeX are made with
LaTeX.  If you want to remove all traces of LaTeX from such documents and
call them "XeTeX, not LaTeX," it's also reasonable to remove all traces of
any flavour of TeX and call them "PDF files, deal with it."

-- 
Matthew Skala
mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca                 People before principles.
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/