[OS X TeX] "xdv2pdf crashed"

[Jonathan Kew]

On 3 Jul 2008, at 6:36 pm, Willem Smelik wrote:

> I updated Ulysses to 1.6 but suddenly my LaTeX-export file did not
> translate into a PDF via TeXshop, even though the log reports that
> a .pdf has been written (which is not the case, however).
> Nothing had been changed in my TeXshop settings.
>
> After some tinkering, I found that the problem is not Ulysses, but
> TeXshop, because the same export-file *does* translate well on my  
> iBook.
> Deleting the .plist file did not help., nor did deleting .aux, .log or
> the old. pdf.  Downloading a new copy of TeXshop does not help:
> basically, TeXshop does not write a PDF.

It's not TeXShop that processes the file and writes (or fails to  
write) the PDF; TeXShop is the interface you see, but the work is  
done behind the scenes by a TeX "engine". In this case, you're  
apparently using xelatex. This does the formatting and calls an  
output driver (xdv2pdf or xdvipdfmx) to actually generate the PDF. So  
TeXShop isn't to blame here!


> I found via the console that "xdv2pdf crashed". But what am I to do
> about that?

Odd that it works on one machine, but not another. Are they running  
the same Mac OS X version? Do you have the same TeX installation (not  
TeXShop version, but the actual TeX distribution) on both? Compare  
the output you see in the TeXShop console window on the two  
machines.... do they match (up to the point where one fails)?

If you run the commands

   which xelatex
   xelatex --version

in Terminal, what do they report?

Could you make a new, minimal file and see if the problem persists?  
If it works with a new file, try adding options or content (I don't  
know anything about Ulysses, but I guess you can start from something  
simple and work upwards) until you identify what triggers the  
problem. Then we can look into it further.

JK