[XeTeX] ifpdftex, ifxetex and dvipdfm

[Jonathan Kew]

On 18 Dec 2007, at 12:06 am, Pablo Rodríguez wrote:

> Hi there,
>
> thinking about helping to extend movie15 to dvipdfm (I cannot promise
> anything, because I must first learn how to do it ;-)), I have
> encountered an issue.
>
> movie15 is written with two outputs in mind: pdftex and dvips. The  
> main
> structure is based on ifpdf-conditionals. To improve dvipdfm  
> support in
> movie15 (without having to rewrite the package from scratch), it would
> be necessary a conditional to separate different outputs for dvips and
> dvipdfm.
>
> I guess ifxetex is not the package, because xdv2pdf cannot process
> dvipdfm specials (AFAIK), but even then dvipdfm(x) are still there and
> xetex doesn't use them.
>
> I'm new to this, but the issue here is that both dvips and dvipdfm  
> come
>   after TeX processes the source file, so an ifdvipdfm cannot be used
> here. At least, as far as I know.
>
> Is there a way to write a conditional that avoids the use of  
> options in
> the package? Or how can I get different outputs for dvips and dvipdfm?

My suggestion would be to use ifxetex, and assume that the output  
driver for xetex is (x)dvipdfmx; that is the default on all platforms  
in 0.997 (yes, it's still not officially released, but use that as  
your target). It's true that xdv2pdf doesn't support all the same  
specials, but I think you should just ignore that driver.

To support the use of dvipdfm(x) with regular LaTeX, you'll have to  
use a package option, I think, unless there is a way to use \specials  
that will work for either driver. There is no way for the TeX job to  
know which dvi-to-whatever driver will be used.

JK