[XeTeX] Some problems with PSTricks

[Jonathan Kew]

On 21 Jun 2008, at 12:22 pm, John Was wrote:

> Hello all
>
> If it is of any relevance, using plain XeTeX in Windows XP I  
> certainly have
> a lot of trouble with PS Tricks line-drawing commands mingled with  
> plain
> text:  usually the very first command works and after that there  
> are many
> strange effects (subsequent line-drawing commands on the same page  
> are often
> ignored, and strangest of all, a line-drawing command on the next  
> page will
> be ignored but the successful one on the preceding page will be  
> repeated on
> the next page in the PDF output even though it is not present at  
> that point
> in the .TEX file!).

This sounds like some kind of confusion in the process of converting  
the individual drawing fragments; the wrong temporary files are being  
used, or something. Can you confirm whether the same behavior happens  
on Linux, or is it Windows-specific?

> This is a pity since I do quite often want (for
> example) to draw arrows between phrases in tables, and this is  
> unproblematic
> in my old and very stable 4AllTeX distribution (which doesn't  
> handle Unicode
> of course).

I'd consider using TikZ for something like that. (That's not an  
excuse for failing to handle PSTricks properly, of course, but it  
might be a good -- and more reliable? -- alternative.)

>
> Other PS Tricks commands, such as \rput to reposition text or  
> \psscalebox to
> stretch and shrink text, seem to work reliably.
>
> Separate PS Tricks pictures using lines and arrows are sometimes  
> incomplete
> though there is no hint of an error in the input:  indeed, Sumatra  
> tends to
> show them correctly whereas in Acrobat I might (for example) find  
> there is a
> line missing from a triangle.  (Unfortunately, everything has to be
> satisfactory in Acrobat in order to pass a PDF file on for book- 
> printing.)
>
> I'm hoping the glitches will disappear in the 2008 TeXLive  
> distribution!

If you can try the pre-release TL2008 packages and report any  
problems, with appropriate test cases, that will improve the chances  
that we can deal with the glitches. I don't use either PSTricks or  
Windows myself, so I am unlikely to run into the issues personally; I  
do try to follow up on reported problems, though, if they're easy for  
me to reproduce here.

JK