[XeTeX] Bug in XeTeX 0.997?

[Ross Moore]

Hi Youssef and Jonathan,

On 15/01/2008, at 11:35 PM, Youssef Jabri wrote:

> Hi Jonathan, Hi everybody,
>
> I am preparing a new version of Arabi that works with both eTeX and
> XeTeX, and things work quite well so far.
> But I noticed that the following code works with eTeX,  XeTeX 0.996
> but fails with version 0.997
>
> \documentclass{article}
> %utf8 is a part of the ArabTeX package which handles unicode by its
> own, it's earlier than the utf8 code used by the inputenc package.
> \usepackage{arabtex,utf8}
> \begin{document}
> bla bla
> \end{document}
>
> I am using the mac intel binary from
>   http://minimals.contextgarden.net/current/bin/xetex/

I can confirm this.
It fails with version 0.997  whereas it works with  0.996 .
The error message is:

Runaway definition?
->\global \let \a at scan \utfc at scan \global \def \sc at beg {\utf at beg } 
\global \ETC.
! File ended while scanning definition of \set at utfc.


The actual point of failure is at line 31 in   .../arabtex/utf8.sty

    \catcode `· 11

This \catcode setting does not work properly and causes the '}'
at the end of the following line to be not recognised as being
the end of the replacement tokens for  \gdef\set at utfc{...

If an extra '}' is appended, the definition is completed,
but not as the author intended; viz.

 > \set at utfc=macro:
->\global \let \a at scan \utfc at scan \global \def \sc at beg {\utf at beg } 
\global \def
\sc at word {\utf at word }\global \a at digits = {0123456789}\global \a at first  
= {Ύϕ^^
92^^8d}\catcode `\BAD.1 \a at message {input encoding set to UTF-8 conventi
ons}}.
l.35 \show\set at utfc


Note the  "\catcode `\BAD.1 " and the extra "}" at the end of these
expansion tokens; whereas with  XeTeX v0.996  the correct expansion is:

 > \set at utfc=macro:
->\global \let \a at scan \utfc at scan \global \def \sc at beg {\utf at beg } 
\global \def
\sc at word {\utf at word }\global \a at digits = {0123456789}\global \a at first  
= {Ύϕ^^
92^^8d}\catcode `1 \a at message {input encoding set to UTF-8 convention
s}.
l.35 \show\set at utfc


This problem seems to be by-passed by changing line 31 to read:
      \catcode `\· 11

but then a similar problem occurs at line 1300 in  .../arabtex/ 
apatch.sty
which is fixed the same way.


These small edits do not adversely affect XeTeX v0.996 either,
so far as I can tell without actually setting anything in arabic.
Certainly the packages now load without errors.



>
> Youssef Jabri


Hope this helps,

	Ross

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Ross Moore                                         ross at maths.mq.edu.au
Mathematics Department                             office: E7A-419
Macquarie University                               tel: +61 +2 9850 8955
Sydney, Australia  2109                            fax: +61 +2 9850 8114
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