[pdftex] conflict and strange behavior between invoice package, graphicx under pdflatex

[Joseph Wright]

On 05/07/2012 23:32, Hin-Tak Leung wrote:
> This is texlive 2012, I found that:
> 
> ...
> \documentclass[10pt,a4paper]{letter}
> \usepackage{graphicx}
> \usepackage{invoice}
> ...
> 
> if processed by pdflatex, generates an extra first page with what looks like about 10 dates. 
> 
> ....
> [2007/09/09] [2010/03/01] [2010/12/02] [2010/09/13] [2007/11/11] [2007/09/09]       [2007/09/09]
> [2010/03/01] [2010/03/01]      [2010/12/02] [2007/09/09] [2007/09/09][2010/03/01] [2010/01/28]
> [2007/09/29]                               [2007/10/02] [2007/11/11]              [2009/07/12]
> ...
> 
> (if processed by latex, then dvips, then there is no extra first page).
> 
> and if I put \usepackage{graphicx} after \usepackage{invoice}, it chokes with a message:
> 
> ...
> \NeedsTeXFormat{LaTeX2e}[
>                               1995/12/01]
> ...
> 
> In the log in the former case, one sign might indicate a problem would be:
> 
> ...
> /usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/tex/generic/oberdiek/etexcmds.sty
> Package etexcmds Info: Could not find \expanded.
> (etexcmds)             That can mean that you are not using pdfTeX 1.50 or
> (etexcmds)             that some package has redefined \expanded.
> (etexcmds)             In the latter case, load this package earlier.
> ...
> 
> 
> I am willing to think it has less to do with graphics/graphicx than invoice and pdflatex. (since graphicx is more well-used), so I am thinking the author of the invoice package might have a look at this, as well as the pdftex people. I think wanting to use invoice together with graphics is a valid usage - e.g. putting in a company logo in an invoice, say, with pdflatex.

This has come up elsewhere:
http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/61113/using-graphicx-with-invoice-results-in-strange-pdf-output.
As I've commented there, this is a bug in invoice, and comes up with
graphicx simply due to the load order in the example.
-- 
Joseph Wright