[XeTeX] XeTeX, XeTeXpicfile, and counter-intuitive behaviour

Philip TAYLOR P.Taylor at Rhul.Ac.Uk
Thu Dec 1 18:51:46 CET 2011



Jonathan Kew wrote:

> The straightforward solution, "use \XeTeXpdffile", was offered pretty quickly, IIRC. If people wish to discuss the details in depth, they are of course welcome to do so, but that discussion was not necessary to resolve the problem you faced when trying to include a PDF graphic.

Yes, it was, and my sincere thanks to the person (Paul in Oz, I believe)
who proposed that solution.  But I did not document at the time the
amount of time I had already spent investigating the cause of the
problem, almost all of which was a result of the confusing diagnostic
which you kindly discuss below.

> If the common man on the top deck of the Number 53 ever encounters any of these messages,
> at any stage in his life, then the typical Clapham resident must be quite unlike my neighbours
> here in semi-rural Oxfordshire!

Said gentleman has retired to equally rural Kent, where he was
(for three years) known as "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells".
Now that he has  adjourned to even more rural Chainhurst,
he no longer has any distinguishing appellation, but he retains
much of the ire for which he was formerly notorious ...

<Interesting background snipped>

OK, so what is the way forward ?  Is XeTeX still being maintained
(for some Knuthian sense of "maintained"), or is everything now
cast in tablets of stone.  May we hope, some day, for the two
diagnostics to be differentiated, or (better still) is there
somewhere a code-base to which we could upload proposed variants
of the diagnostics to in order lighten the load on whomsoever (he,
she or it) who actually builds these things ?

** Phil.


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