[XeTeX] XeTeX error, no PDF

[Jonathan Kew]

On 1 Jan 2008, at 5:26 pm, Stephen Moye wrote:

> This is a plain TeX project, and the only
> \special-s are:
>
> 	\def\dogray{\special{color gray .6}}
> 	\def\undogray{\special{color gray 0}}
>
> Odder, is that some files compile perfectly (using 0.997/xdvipdfmx)
> while others do not.
>
> Originally, I had \relax in the commands:
>
> 	\def\dogray{\special{color gray .6\relax}}
> 	\def\undogray{\special{color gray 0\relax}}
>
> but have since removed them. The problem persists -- most files
> typeset, while a handful do not.

You definitely don't want \relax in specials like this. Yes, it's  
sometimes useful to unambiguously terminate numbers that TeX will be  
scanning, but these numbers are within the \special, and aren't  
scanned by TeX at all, only passed on to the driver. So \relax there  
is meaningless, and will lead to warning messages from xdvipdfmx.

I seem to recall a bug in xdvipdfmx where trailing spaces in color  
specials could cause problems; that has been fixed, I think (see  
xdvipdfmx rev. 98, committed on October 24th), but if you have an  
older build then maybe that's the source of your troubles?

Otherwise, I'd still be interested in seeing a complete sample that  
fails, if possible.

JK