[XeTeX] Styles / Preferred Styles mismatch and 'broken pipe'

[Nikola Lecic]

On Fri, 27 Apr 2007 16:44:09 +0200
Jonathan Kew <jonathan_kew at sil.org> wrote:

> On 25 Apr 2007, at 4:40 pm, Nikola Lecic wrote:
> 
> > Hello,
> >
> > An OTF font with Styles/Preferred Styles mismatch causes 'broken  
> > pipe' in XeTeX 0-996 (FreeBSD binary at least).
> >
> > Of course, this is not a regular situation, I produced it by  
> > accident -- altering some fonts for personal testing purposes. But  
> > I guess that 'broken pipe' shouldn't happen even then, and that's  
> > why I'm reporting this. (And indeed, this doesn't happen with
> > XeTeX 0.995.)
> 
> Thanks for the report.
> 
> The "Broken pipe" message indicates that xdvipdfmx aborted
> processing (with the message "Output file removed"), due to a fatal
> problem -- in particular, failure to load a required font, because of
> the naming confusion. As xetex is still trying to send XDV output via
> a pipe, but the process reading it has now gone away, you get the
> "Broken pipe" message.
> 
> What version of fontconfig is installed on your system? Running  
> "xetex --version" should report the library version number; this  
> would be interesting. In particular, versions prior to 2.3 seem to  
> have more problems finding fonts when there are multiple family and/ 
> or style names, as in your example. The typical symptom with FC
> 2.2.x is that xetex finds the font OK during formatting, but then
> xdvipdfmx fails to find it at PDF generation time, which sounds like
> what's happening in your case.

Jonathan, thank you for the reply and explanation. Even fontconfig-2.3.2 with Test Font confuses xdvipdfmx; fontconfig-2.4.2 doesn't.

(i)

I generated the outputs from my previous mail using the following configuration:

nikola at nyx% xetex --version
XeTeX 3.141592-0.996 (Web2C 7.5.6)
kpathsea version 3.5.6
Copyright 2007 SIL International.
Kpathsea is copyright 2007 Karl Berry and Olaf Weber.
There is NO warranty.  Redistribution of this software is
covered by the terms of both the XeTeX copyright and
the Lesser GNU General Public License.
For more information about these matters, see the file
named COPYING and the XeTeX source.
Primary author of XeTeX: Jonathan Kew.
Kpathsea written by Karl Berry, Olaf Weber, and others.

Compiled with ICU version 3.4 [with modifications for XeTeX]
Compiled with zlib version 1.2.3; using 1.2.3
Compiled with FreeType2 version 2.2.1; using 2.2.1
Compiled with fontconfig version 2.3.2; using 2.3.2
Compiled with libpng version 1.2.15; using 1.2.15
Compiled with xpdf version 3.01

Fontconfig 2.3.2 obviously ignores information on preffered styles:

nikola at nyx% fc-list | grep Test
Test Font One Altered:style=Regular

(ii)

After updating all font-related ports and using

nikola at nyx% xetex --version
XeTeX 3.141592-0.996 (Web2C 7.5.6)
kpathsea version 3.5.6
Copyright 2007 SIL International.
Kpathsea is copyright 2007 Karl Berry and Olaf Weber.
There is NO warranty.  Redistribution of this software is
covered by the terms of both the XeTeX copyright and
the Lesser GNU General Public License.
For more information about these matters, see the file
named COPYING and the XeTeX source.
Primary author of XeTeX: Jonathan Kew.
Kpathsea written by Karl Berry, Olaf Weber, and others.

Compiled with ICU version 3.4 [with modifications for XeTeX]
Compiled with zlib version 1.2.3; using 1.2.3
Compiled with FreeType2 version 2.2.1; using 2.2.1
Compiled with fontconfig version 2.3.2; using 2.4.2
Compiled with libpng version 1.2.15; using 1.2.15
Compiled with xpdf version 3.01

... I got the following result:

nikola at nyx% xelatex mini
This is XeTeXk, Version 3.141592-2.2-0.996 (Web2C 7.5.6)
 %&-line parsing enabled.
entering extended mode
(./mini.tex
LaTeX2e <2005/12/01>
------------------------>%--------------------------
(./mini.aux) [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14]
[15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29]
[30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41
** NOTICE: This document contains a `Preview & Print only' licensed font **
] [42] [43] [44]
[45] [46] [47] [48] [49] [50] [51] [52] [53] [54] [55] [56] [57] [58] [59]
[60] [61] [62] [63] [64] [65] [66] [67] [68] [69] [70] [71] [72] [73] [74]
[75] [76] [77] [78] [79] (./mini.aux) )
Output written on mini.pdf (79 pages).
Transcript written on mini.log.

Fontconfig-2.4.2 identifies Test Font correctly:

nikola at nyx% fc-list | grep Test
Test Font One Altered:style=Italic,Regular

The 'Preview & Print only' message appears at the very same place where 'broken pipe' used to happen. What causes it?

And that leads me to another fontconfig-related question; I think it's better to start a new topic.

Nikola Lečić