[XeTeX] Ghostscript 9.53

[Richard Koch]

Jean-Francois and xetex group,

Jean-Francois sent the source for his sample xetex program which caused a hang of xetex with multiple complaints of the form 

   **** WARNING: .setopacityalpha is deprecated (as of 9.53.0) and will be removed in a future release
   **** See .setfillconstantalpha/.setalphaisshape for the improved solution


Since I make the TeX Live 2021 binaries for Macs (Arm and Intel) and since I made new binaries two days ago from the latest sources,  I could add those binaries to a copy of TeX Live 2020, rebuild formats, and then test his source. I'm sorry to report that the bug still exists, at least on the Mac.

Dick Koch
koch at uoregon.edu


> On Feb 21, 2021, at 2:43 AM, jfbu <jfbu at free.fr> wrote:
> 
> Hi Richard,
> 
> I am attaching the file and the log. The console output contains
> as I described many GS warnings:
> 
>    **** WARNING: .setopacityalpha is deprecated (as of 9.53.0) and will be removed in a future release
>    **** See .setfillconstantalpha/.setalphaisshape for the improved solution
> 
> 
> emitted slower and slower and I killed the process via CTRL-C in the end.
> 
> My version of ghostscript is 9.53.3.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Jean-François
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Le 20 févr. 2021 à 19:07, Richard Koch <koch at uoregon.edu> a écrit :
> 
> > jfbu,
> > 
> > We are almost ready to create MacTeX-2021 and TeX Live 2021. We will include
> > Ghostscript 9.53.3.
> > 
> > Could you possibly send me source code which exhibits this problem so I can see if it occurs with the current build of TeX Live (or for that matter with x86_64-darwin from 2020)?
> > 
> > Many thanks.
> > 
> > Richard Koch
> > koch at uoregon.edu
> > 
> > 
> > 
> >> On Feb 20, 2021, at 9:55 AM, jfbu <jfbu at free.fr> wrote:
> >> 
> >> Hi,
> >> 
> >> Recently I updated Ghostscript and it is now at 9.53.3
> >> 
> >> It seems xelatex compilation stalls and possibly never
> >> completes on some documents which I have been given
> >> and use pstricks. Here is a shortened console output
> >> 
> >> $ xelatex foo.tex 
> >> This is XeTeX, Version 3.14159265-2.6-0.999992 (TeX Live 2020) (preloaded format=xelatex)
> >> restricted \write18 enabled.
> >> entering extended mode
> >> (./foo.tex
> >> LaTeX2e <2020-10-01> patch level 4
> >> L3 programming layer <2021-02-06>
> >> ....
> >> .... uses animate package and pstricks
> >> ....
> >> <a0,fr0> <a0,fr1> <a0,fr2> <a0,fr3> <a0,fr4> <a0,fr5> <a0,fr6> <a0,fr7>
> >> <a0,fr8> <a0,fr9> <a0,fr10> <a0,fr11> <a0,fr12> <a0,fr13> <a0,fr14> <a0,fr15>
> >> <a0,fr16> <a0,fr17> <a0,fr18> <a0,fr19> <a0,fr20> <a0,fr21> <a0,fr22>
> >> <a0,fr23> <a0,fr24> <a0,fr25> <a0,fr26> <a0,fr27> <a0,fr28> <a0,fr29>
> >> <a0,fr30> <a0,fr31> <a0,fr32> <a0,fr33> <a0,fr34> <a0,fr35> <a0,fr36>
> >> <a0,fr37> <a0,fr38> <a0,fr39> <a0,fr40> <a0,fr41> <a0,fr42> <a0,fr43>
> >> <a0,fr44> <a0,fr45> <a0,fr46> <a0,fr47> <a0,fr48> <a0,fr49> <a0,fr50>
> >> <a0,fr51> <a0,fr52> <a0,fr53> <a0,fr54> <a0,fr55> <a0,fr56> <a0,fr57>
> >> <a0,fr58> <a0,fr59> <a0,fr60> <a0,fr61> <a0,fr62> <a0,fr63> <a0,fr64>
> >> <a0,fr65> <a0,fr66> <a0,fr67> <a0,fr68> <a0,fr69> <a0,fr70> <a0,fr71>
> >> <a0,fr72> [2] (./foo.aux)
> >> 
> >> which looks good but then I get about a hundred
> >> 
> >>  **** WARNING: .setopacityalpha is deprecated (as of 9.53.0) and will be removed in a future release
> >>  **** See .setfillconstantalpha/.setalphaisshape for the improved solution
> >> 
> >> 
> >> which are emitted slower and slower and slower
> >> until finally I have to kill the job
> >> 
> >> **** WARNING: .setopacityalpha is deprecated (as of 9.53.0) and will be removed in a future release
> >> **** See .setfillconstantalpha/.setalphaisshape for the improved solution
> >> ^C(see the transcript file for additional information)
> >> Error 2 (driver return code) generating output;
> >> file foo.pdf may not be valid.
> >> Transcript written on foo.log.
> >> 
> >> 
> >> With the latex+dvips+ps2pdf route, compilation succeeds
> >> but the ps2pdf steps output abouts 220 warnings as above to stdout
> >> 
> >> Also I have to use the -dALLOWPSTRANSPARENCY else the ps2pdf crashes,
> >> 
> >> I did not know whether to post this to tlbuild or here.
> >> I did a quick check of archives of past few months.
> >> Quite probably the Ghostscript thing has been discussed probably
> >> one or two years ago.
> >> I understand my install is double-faced.
> >> On the texlive side it is darwin-legacy.
> >> 
> >> 
> >> However I felt there was a specific xetex issue because
> >> I have to CTRL-C with xelatex, not with ps2pdf.
> >> 
> >> Regards. 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> 
> > 
> 
> <cubicroots.tex><cubicroots.log>