[XeTeX] \typeout command not recognized ?

[Jonathan Kew]

On 24 Feb 2006, at 8:10 am, Bruno Voisin wrote:

> Le 24 févr. 06 à 08:52, Damlamian, Alain a écrit :
>
>> While trying out some typesetting with XeTeX, I came to this error:
>>
<snip>
>>> (/usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/tex/xelatex/graphics/xetex.def
>>> ! Undefined control sequence.
>>> l.527 \typeout
>>>               {...supports rotation and scaling}%
>>> ?
>>> Process aborted
>
> I'm not quite sure this is connected, but does the above line:
>
>>> (./Lecture Erevan2_Oct. 2004 copy.tex
>
> mean you're running XeTeX on a file with a space in its name?

Shouldn't be a problem, AFAIK.

>
> I see you're using plain TeX, and loading the LaTeX graphics  
> package through the miniltx.tex compatibility layer. Normally this  
> should work, but who knows?
>
<snip>
>
> In any case, \typeout is a TeX primitive if I remember correctly,  
> thus I doubt any TeX implementation could make it wrong.

No; \typeout is a LaTeX macro, and that's why it causes a problem  
here. Guess we should change xetex.def to use something "plainer". See:

	Kew-PowerBookG4:~ jonathan$ latex \\show\\typeout
	This is pdfeTeX, Version 3.141592-1.30.4-2.2 (Web2C 7.5.5)
	entering extended mode
	LaTeX2e <2003/12/01>
	Babel <v3.8d> and hyphenation patterns for american, french, german,  
latin, spa
	nish, nohyphenation, loaded.
	> \typeout=macro:
	#1->\begingroup \set at display@protect \immediate \write \@unused {#1} 
\endgroup .
	<*> \show\typeout

Alain, for an immediate workaround, you can simply edit the file /usr/ 
local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/tex/xelatex/graphics/xetex.def and  
remove (or comment out) the \typeout line.

JK