[XeTeX] Re: fontspec, xelatex and the geometry package

[Will Robertson]

11/10/2005, 1am - Stuart Robertson wrote:

> I'm trying to get to grips with XeLaTeX and am using the fontspec  
> package. I want to set pages in landscape and use the 2in1 and  
> geometry packages to get acceptable margins. However when I try my  
> text seems set well enough but nothing I do can make the pages  
> appear in landscape.
>

Hi Stuart,

Good to hear from you.
The problem you describe is a shortcoming in XeTeX, and happens to be  
unrelated to fontspec, but I can point you in the right direction.  
Further queries would probably be best directed to the XeTeX mailing  
list, to which I've CC-ed this reply.

XeTeX currently has no way to internally set the output papersize,  
and relies on a command line argument to know how big to make the  
PDF. So what to do about it?

The easiest thing to do would be to create a TeXShop (assuming you  
use TeXShop) engine to handle XeLaTeX landscape documents. This is  
quite simple, actually, once you know where to look.

• Step one
In the Finder, go to ~/Library/TeXShop/Engines/ (~/ means your home  
folder) and duplicate XeLaTeX.engine (it is important to duplicate  
this file, rather than create a new, empty file from scratch). Call  
the copy "XeLaTeX landscape.engine" or something similar.

• Step two
Now open this file in TextEdit and replace the line
   xelatex --shell-escape "$1"
with
   xelatex --shell-escape --papersize=297mm,210mm "$1"

Now you should be able to select "XeLaTeX landscape" from the list of  
engines in the document toolbar, and this will create your document  
on a landscape-sized a4 page.

Best of luck!

Will