[XeTeX] Updating XeTeX (plain) for PS Tricks

John Was john.was at ntlworld.com
Sat Sep 8 19:07:25 CEST 2007


Dear Bruno

This is very odd - I use \scalebox quite often in my EmTeX distribution - it 
certainly is (or was) a command in PS Tricks and is documented (with the 
syntax I have given) in the manual (a few years out of date) that I printed 
out when I first started to use PS Tricks.  I attach a PDF of exactly the 
same file, renamed pstrexp1 and with the % removed before the \scalebox 
line, this time processed with EmTeX (an old 4AllTeX distribution) and 
converted to PDF with Adobe distiller.  (Of course the statements in the 
text of the file are no longer true since everything in fact works.)

If the files in my log don't come from the TeXLive distribution then they 
must have been put there by a ghost.  I have never added anything like that 
to TeXLive - as a new user I'd be too scared of the consequences!

But I hadn't realized that GhostScript didn't come with TeXLive, and if that 
is the case I will need to point XeTeX to where I keep GhostScript on my 
system.  Now I just need to find out how to do that....

Best


John


The sample file, I should add, works perfectly in my old EmTeX
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bruno Voisin" <bvoisin at mac.com>
To: "Unicode-based TeX for Mac OS X and other platforms" <xetex at tug.org>
Sent: Saturday, September 08, 2007 5:48 PM
Subject: JunkEmail: Re: [XeTeX] Updating XeTeX (plain) for PS Tricks


Le 8 sept. 07 à 16:11, John Was a écrit :

> I presume GhostScript is installed as I'm using the TeXLive
> installation. (I do have GhostScript anyway for my normal EmTeX,
> but it is a different version on a different area of my computer.)

As far as I know GhostScript isn't part of TeXLive and must be
installed separately. At least on the Mac it must.

> Here is the .TEX file that causes this:
>
> \nopagenumbers
> \input pstricks
> This is some text.\par
> %This is some \scalebox{-1 1}{reversed text}
> Scalebox doesn't work (causes an `undefined control sequence'
> error).\par
> \psline{->}(1cm,2cm)(5cm,3cm)(7cm,-8cm)\par
> Neither does psline though it doesn't halt processing.\par
> \rput(4cm,-5cm){Moveable text}\par
> But rput does.\par
> And this \rotateleft{should be rotated left.}\par
> TeX allows for it to be but in fact it isn't.\par
>
> .\vfill \eject \bye
>
> I attach the resulting PDF.

\scalebox is an instruction specific to the LaTeX graphics/graphicx
package. In order to get it to work, you must use the plain TeX
adaptation in texmf/tex/plain/plgraph/, namely call graphicx.tex.

Moreover, the correct syntax for \scalebox is \scalebox{-1}[1]
{reversed text}.

Replace the above with:

\nopagenumbers
\input graphicx
\input pstricks
This is some text.\par
This is some \scalebox{-1}[1]{reversed text}.\par
%Scalebox doesn't work (causes an `undefined control sequence' error).
\par
\psline{->}(1cm,2cm)(5cm,3cm)(7cm,-8cm)\par
Neither does psline though it doesn't halt processing.\par
\rput(4cm,-5cm){Moveable text}\par
But rput does.\par
And this \rotateleft{should be rotated left.}\par
TeX allows for it to be but in fact it isn't.\par
.\vfill \eject \bye

Works fine here, with TeX and GhostScript. I can't try with XeTeX and
xdvipdfmx, as the files mentioned in this thread, pstricks.con and
xetex-pstricks.con, don't seem to be present in TeXLive-2007; I
imagine they belong to an SVN version or something like that.

Bruno Voisin

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