[XeTeX] Clipping Support in XeTeX

[Jonathan Kew]

On 3 Apr 2006, at 4:21 am, Michael Leonard wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I am trying to use the graphicx package with the viewport option  
> and get the following:
>
> 	No clipping support in XeTeX yet on input line 8.
>
> Is there any hope for clipping support in the near future? Is there  
> another way to accomplish this in XeTeX?

Yes, there's hope (for some unspecified definition of "near future").  
An alternative output driver is in development which should provide  
such features (if only I could find some time to work on it....)

In the meantime, I can't think of a way to accomplish this directly  
in XeTeX. I think you're left with the workaround of clipping the  
graphic ahead of time with an external tool.

Oh, I suppose in theory you could write macros that would figure out  
the clipping box during the TeX run, and then use \write18 to execute  
a command that would actually clip the graphic (something like  
ImageMagick can probably do this, I guess, or else use the Python  
CoreGraphics bindings to write a little script); then use the clipped  
version. (I'm not going to attempt this, though; just an idea in case  
anyone feels like exploring it further.)

JK