[XeTeX] vmargin package

Andreas Matthias andreas.matthias at gmail.com
Thu Dec 4 19:24:31 CET 2008


Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:

> Does the vmargin package work with XeLaTeX,

Don't use vmargin at all. It is buggy and induces problems with
other packages. Use typearea.sty or geometry.sty instead. 

Vmargin does the same foolish things novices often do. It manipulates
\hoffset and \voffset just to ease the calculation of the paper
margins. This is rubbish. In chapter 23 `Output Routines' (page 251)
of the TeXbook Knuth clearly states when to use \{h,v}offset:

   If you want your output to be positioned differently when it is
   ultimately printed, you can offset it by giving nonzero values
   to \hoffset and \voffset.

Here `when it is ultimately printed' means, that you can change
\{h,v}offset, if you want to correct an offset caused by the
printer. But it is not meant to be used to simplify the calculation
of the paper margin. Knuth did not introduced \{v,h}offset out of
pure maliciousness.


Apart from that vmargin does not calculate the ISO page sizes correctly.
The ISO A series starts at 841mm x 1189mm whereas vmargins starts
at at 840.9mm x 1189.2mm.


Ciao
Andreas



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