[XeTeX] Overfull \hbox in RTL (another bug of TeX--XeT)

David Carlisle d.p.carlisle at gmail.com
Mon Nov 21 14:47:43 CET 2016


On 21 November 2016 at 12:42, Vafa Khalighi <vk489 at uowmail.edu.au> wrote:
> When TeX is building a LTR paragraph, if there are some overfull \hbox s,
> then they stick out at the right of the offending box (please see the
> example on page 27 of The TeXBook and Knuth explanation).
>
>
> When one is typesetting a right to left paragraph, it is expected that if
> there is any overfull \hbox, then it should stick out at the left of the
> offending box (opposite to what happens in LTR) but in TeX--XeT model, the
> beginning of the paragraph sticks out which is completely wrong and very
> annoying.
>
>
> LuaTeX's behavior is ok.
>
>
>
> I will file a bug report on sourceforge later.
>
>


That really is just a symptom of the basic problem with the tex-(-)xet
model, the paragraph builder is essentially _always_ building a LTR
paragraph, you can only use `\beginR/endR` _within_ the paragraph to
typeset text runs in the opposite direction. There is no way to say
"build a right to left paragraph" corresponding to \pardir.

David


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