[Xy-pic] Really weird behavior

[Ross Moore]

Hi Daniel, Michael, and others

On 11/12/2013, at 6:08 AM, Daniel Müllner wrote:

> Hi Michael,
> 
> here is an even more minimalistic example that shows what's going on:
> 
> \documentclass{article}
> \pdfoutput1
> \usepackage{color}
> \usepackage{xy}
> 
> \begin{document}
> \xy
> %\relax
> {\color{red}Test}
> \endxy
> Test
> \end{document}
> 
> With the \relax, Xy-pic treats the curly brackets as a <decor>ation
> (ibid., Figure 4). The curly brackets are passed through all levels of
> Xy-pic parsing; hence the \color{red} has local scope.

That is the effect, but not necessarily the clearest way to explain it
— depending upon how well-versed you are with Xy-pic concepts and jargon.

The next paragraph expands this.

The \relax has ended the Xy-pic parsing, which cannot be switched back
on again without some explicit Xy-pic macro, such as  \POS or \drop etc.
Thus the {\color{red}Test} just generates some TeX content that sits inside 
the overall box for this particular instance of an Xy-pic diagram.
There is no easy way to move to its top/bottom/left/right extents,
or use it as the source/target of lines and arrows.

OK, so this is what is meant by a <decor>ation, rather than an <object>.

> 
> Without the \relax, Xy-pic treats the curly brackets as a Xy-pic group
> and interprets the content like a nested Xy-pic environment (Xy-pic
> reference manual, Figure 1, line 22). 

Yes.
The '{' does not end the parsing, but rather results in an \hbox{ 
building up an <object>. Within that \hbox  the parser restarts,
 (for Daniel's  "nested Xy-pic environment" )
but finishes again upon encountering  \color , which is not an 
Xy-pic macro. The closing '}' closes the \hbox{...} construction,
to complete the capture of the content for the <object>, but this is 
not the end of the TeX group required to trigger the result of
the \aftergroup  in the expansion of \color .

Thus whatever is required to change the colour back, within 
the PDF output, is not going to be wrapped up inside that \hbox ; 
hence color can bleed out of scope.

> The curly brackets are stripped
> and are lost as a TeX group;

This is rather similar to doing:

  \def\myredtext{\color{red}Test}
  Here is my \myredtext.

So that the {...} are delimiting an argument, rather than
enclosing the scope of a macro definition.

> therefore the \color{red} has global scope.

Well, not necessarily completely global, just a wider scope 
than what you might think.
In this simple example it *is* global.

Note that the .log file gets a message:

>>> pdfTeX warning: /usr/local/texlive/2012/bin/x86_64-darwin/pdflatex: pop empty c
>>> olor page stack 0

which indicates that something is definitely not fully synchronised.
It is as if the stack is being popped before the actual push has happened.


Due to these kinds of problems, which are rather subtle,
you really should stick to using Xy-pic's way of handling color
as a property (or style) of the <object>.

Mixing LaTeX colour commands within Xy-pic diagrams is not recommended,
unless you are fully aware of how LaTeX does it, and can handle 
the complicated nested groupings properly.


The example from below should work fine as:

>>> \documentclass{article}
>>> \usepackage{color}
>>> \usepackage[pdftex,color,arrow,matrix]{xy}
>>> \begin{document}
>>> 
>>> $$\xy
>>> \ar@[red]@{->}^[green]{f}(20,0)
>>> \endxy$$
>>> Test
>>> 
>>> \end{document}


Note however the *requirement* to have  \usepackage{color} 
in order to have LaTeX's standard color names recognised.
 (red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow, black, white)

This is a dependency that has somehow escaped our attention.

I now think this is more a deficiency in the documentation 
than a problem with Xy-pic's coding for colour support.


The crucial point is that LaTeX's  \definecolor  command
creates a macroname  \color@<name>  
       (via coding \csname color@#2\endcsname ).

Now Xy-pic, when testing whether a  [...]  style specifier
is defined, includes a test for such a macro name when the
color option has been loaded.

In the case of Daniel's pdftex.sty  and related coding,
this is done through  \xP at checkcolor ; viz.

>>> \next@ ->\xP at checkcolor {TealBlue}
>>> 
>>> \xP at checkcolor #1->\@ifundefined {\string \color@ \detokenize {#1}}{\OBJECT at sha
>>> pei [#1]}{\xP at append \toks@ {\noexpand \xP at color {{\detokenize {#1}}}}\xyFN@ \O
>>> BJECT@ }
>>> #1<-TealBlue


Thus it is not necessary for Xy-pic to have coding that
specifically supports those colour names.
Indeed any colour defined by any other LaTeX package should
automatically become available as a named colour for use within
an Xy-pic diagram.
This could be spelt out more clearly in the documentation.

That snippet of macro expansion tracing also shows that
a colour name will override a style defined with that same name.
Thus

   \ar@[thick]@{->}^[green]{f}(20,0)

will not give a thicker line if there is a colour named 'thick'.


> 
> Regards,
> 
> Daniel
> 
> 
> On 12/10/2013 05:51 PM, Michael Barr wrote:
>> If you compile the following file:
>> 
>> \documentclass{article}
>> \pdfoutput1
>> \usepackage{color}
>> \def\red{\color{red}}
>> \def\green{\color{green}}
>> \usepackage[arrow]{xy}
>> 
>> \begin{document}
>> \newcount \xytest
>> $$\xy
>> \xytest0
>> {\red\ar@{->}^{\green f}(20,0)}
>> \endxy$$
>> Test
>> \end{document}
>> 
>> you find nothing special about the output.  In particular, the word Test
>> is black.  Now comment out the line \xytest0 and see what happens.  On
>> my computer the word Test is now red.  How can this totally irrelevant
>> assignment make a difference in the behavior?  And how can this color
>> assignment, which is inside a group, make a difference outside?
>> 
>> This would appear to have something to do with something in xy-pic since
>> the simple test line: {\red Test} Test gives the expected result, the
>> first word in red and the second one black.
>> 
>> Michael



Hope this helps,

	Ross

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ross Moore                                       ross.moore at mq.edu.au 
Mathematics Department                           office: E7A-206      
Macquarie University                             tel: +61 (0)2 9850 8955
Sydney, Australia  2109                          fax: +61 (0)2 9850 8114
------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: logo.png
Type: image/png
Size: 5257 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://tug.org/pipermail/xy-pic/attachments/20131213/5a29fe4f/attachment.png>
-------------- next part --------------