[XeTeX] File name problem

Jonathan Kew jonathan_kew at sil.org
Mon Jul 4 11:17:16 CEST 2005


On 4 Jul 2005, at 12:27 am, Herbert Schulz wrote:

>
> On Jul 3, 2005, at 6:09 PM, Stephen Moye wrote:
>
>
>> ...
>> Does XeTeX not like spaces in a file name?
>>
>> Puzzled. Thanks in advance for any insights.
>>
>> Stephen Moye
>>
>>
>
> Howdy,
>
> You've hit the nail on the head. Traditional command line programs  
> (and TeX, etc., falls into that category) worked on OS's that  
> didn't allow spaces in file names and it is a hangover from those  
> days.

XeTeX itself can actually handle filenames with spaces--you can put  
quote marks around them, as in

     \input "my long file name with spaces"

However, Stephen's example shows that it doesn't correctly quote the  
filename when passing it on to the xdv2pdf process, so if the actual  
jobname has spaces (as opposed to some other file that's \input  
during the job) then you'll have trouble.

This counts as a bug, and I should fix it; however, as a general rule  
in the TeX world, it's safest to avoid spaces and other "peculiar"  
characters in filenames, as other tools may also have problems with  
them.

JK



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