[XeTeX] XeTeX version 0.6 available

[Jonathan Kew]

On 10 May 2004, at 4:08 pm, Ross Moore wrote:

> Hi Jonathan,
>
> On 11/05/2004, at 12:49 AM, Jonathan Kew wrote:
>
>>
>> What makes it tricky is that currently, xdv2pdf simply draws the 
>> contents of the .xdv file, in the order it encounters them, into a 
>> Quartz graphics context; it has no direct control over the PDF 
>> generation. So when it sees \special{x:backgroundcolor=...}, it may 
>> well be too late to apply a background to the page as a whole.
>
>  ... but the driver implementation places it first on each page.
>
> It does this by patching the \shipout primitive.
> \pagecolor{....} simply sets a value, which is read in the \output
> routine and the \special is constructed before the page content
> is shipped-out.
>
> This means:
>   a. only 1 instance of the \special can occur on a page;
>   b. the last value on a page will win;
>   c.  dvx2pdf sees this \special at the top of the page,
>      so the background color is knowable at all times.

Ah.....given that restriction on usage, it becomes trivial.

If someone does ever put the \special later in the page, it will in 
effect erase whatever preceded it; I suppose this can be considered a 
feature rather than a bug, provided it's documented as such. Assuming 
we eventually have documentation! :-)

> Do you want me to send you the revised driver,
> for generating documents suitable for testing?

OK. I'll put this into the upcoming update.

JK