[XeTeX] XeTeX error, no PDF

[Jonathan Kew]

Happy New Year!

On 1 Jan 2008, at 1:44 am, Stephen Moye wrote:

> I have been using XeTeX 0.997 (on a Mac G5 DP) without any problems  
> to speak of -- until tonight.
>
> I typeset a file and got this error message:
>
> This is XeTeXk, Version 3.141592-2.2-0.997 (Web2C 7.5.6)
>  %&-line parsing enabled.
> entering extended mode
> (./Hanover-new.tex [2] [3]
> Output file removed.
>  )
> Error 256 (driver return code) generating output;
> file Hanover-new.pdf may not be valid.
> Transcript written on Hanover-new.log.
>
> %%%%%
>
> This file uses a fmt file that I have regenerated. The file uses  
> Hoefler Text. Oh, and I just upgraded to Leopard.

This is a failure in xdvipdfmx, the output driver. I'm guessing it is  
a Leopard font issue of some kind -- there seem to be a number of  
these. To try and narrow it down, the first thing to try is to run  
the driver with "verbose" messages:

   xetex -no-pdf Hanover-new.tex
   xdvipdfmx -E -vv Hanover-new.xdv

I'm predicting that the xetex run will go fine, but xdvipdfmx will  
give some kind of error message relating to a particular font.

One workaround might be to use the old xdv2pdf driver instead of  
xdvipdfmx:

   xetex -output-driver=xdv2pdf Hanover-new.tex

But I'd like to know what's causing the failure with xdvipdfmx, so  
please try that with -vv and let us know what it reports.

JK