[XeTeX] XETEX \special commands changed for xdvipdfmx?

[Paul Howson]

On 07/09/2007, at 5:22 PM, Jonathan Kew wrote:

> xdvipdfmx supports lots more \special{}s (most of which are described
> in the dvipdfm(x) documentation, I guess), but it should also
> understand the basic xetex ones such as you're using.

OK. That's reassuring to know. (Not sure where I find the dvipdfm(x)  
documentation ... but will have a hunt for it.)

>> Now I am getting errors, for example:
>>
>> [3sh: gs: command
>> not found
>
> This seems very odd; apparently a shell (sh) process is complaining
> that it can't find ghostscript (gs). But why would it be trying to
> run gs at all? The only thing I can think of would be if your
> dvipdfmx.cfg setup tries to support the automatic conversion of
> graphics from one format to another.
>
> Can you try paring this down to a minimal document that still
> exhibits the problem, and if that process doesn't lead you to an
> answer by itself, then post it for me (or others) to try?

Yes, will do.

> BTW, I should add that if this is a LaTeX (xelatex) document, rather
> than "raw" xetex, I'd recommend using the standard "color" package
> instead of low-level \special commands; that helps to insulate you
> from any changes in the underlying drivers, etc.
>
> (But that doesn't account for the problem you're seeing, as far as I
> can tell.)

It's not LaTeX. Just plain TEX.

I will do some more experiments and report back.

Paul Howson