[XeTeX] \beginL and colour

[Jonathan Kew]

On 13 Nov 2004, at 6:55 am, Adam Lindsay wrote:

> Adam Lindsay said this at Sat, 13 Nov 2004 11:16:44 +0000:
>
>>>> Is this a bug, or a complete lack of understanding on my part of the
>>>> model?
>>>
>>> Looks like a bug to me. I wonder why it does that........
>>
>> Following a hunch this morning, I switched the black and red lines, 
>> and
>> it came out as originally intended. Could it be the something in 
>> Apple's
>> styled text system continues to scan from left to right for applying 
>> colours?
>
> [to answer my own question:]
> Yeah, it's looking like that's the case. If I put the colour switch
> inside a \beginL, then it scans in the right order:
>
[...snip...]

Thanks for the further info, Adam. I'll give it some thought, but won't 
be in a position to really dig in until the end of the month or so, at 
best.

Incidentally, one way to avoid the issue would be to use the 
color=XXXXXX attribute on fonts rather than using the \special commands 
to change text color. That way, the color is an inherent property of 
the characters, rather than depending on where the \specials end up 
after TeX-XeT direction reversal.

By the way, what happens if you try a similar experiment using e-TeX 
and dvipdfm, with \specials to set text color? That would be more 
comparable than a direct pdfeTeX run.

JK