[XeTeX] TiKZ, XeTeX, semitransparent - Acrobat draws then erases

[Jonathan Kew]

On 9 May 2008, at 7:25 pm, Matthew Leingang wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
> I had a problem with a beamer presentation typeset with xelatex and
> viewed with the Acrobat Reader.  On one of the slides, paging to it
> would flash the correct slide, then suddenly half of the slide would
> disappear.  I would get a dialog saying there's an error in the PDF,
> then another dialog giving an error code of 14.
>
> I worked it down considerably to the following minimal example:
>
> %%!TEX TS-program = xelatex
> \documentclass{article}
> \usepackage{tikz}
> \begin{document}
> Is there a picture here?
> \begin{tikzpicture}
> \draw[semitransparent] (0,0) -- (1,0) node[opaque] {$z$};
> \end{tikzpicture}
> \end{document}
>
> Typeset with pdflatex, everything's fine.  Typeset with xelatex, it
> looks fine in TeXShop's PDF viewer and Mac OS X's Preview
> application.  In Acrobat Reader, however, the page draws then
> disappears right away. This is on Acrobat Reader 8.1.2, but I've
> viewed the same PDF on Acrobat Reader on another mac, and also on a
> PC and gotten the same problem.
>
> If I remove the "semitransparent" option then the Acrobat problem
> goes away.
>
> I can definitely get along without the option in my slideshow but I
> have no idea what caused the problem. Thanks in advance for any ideas.

Does this work with latex->dvi->dvipdfmx? My guess is that tikz's  
"semitransparent" feature is generating PDF code designed to work in  
conjunction with pdftex, and won't work with other output drivers.

If it works reliably with latex+dvipdfmx, then we should try to  
establish what's different in the xelatex case.

JK