[XeTeX] Default values of \pdfpage{width, height}

[Andreas Matthias]

Ross Moore wrote:

> On 03/08/2007, at 10:42 AM, Andreas Matthias wrote:
> 
>> Jonathan Kew wrote:

> But the \pdfpagewidth  and  \pdfpageheight
> are not parameters that are meant to be changed willy-nilly
> throughout a document.

There's nothing wrong with changing them the way you like:
willy-nilly or however.

I agree that in general it is not easy to do something sensible
with it because of TeXs asynchronous output mechanism. But
that doesn't mean that they are "not meant to be changed".

> It may be that there is a problem in that the effect of this  \special
> is unscoped, so affects all subsequent pages too,.
> One way to avoid this is to have another  \special{papersize=<default>}
> inserted after each special page has been output.

What do you mean with "special page"?

I think \special{papersize=default} should be set (by XeTeX) for 
_every_ page if it is not overwritten by the user.


>>> So another option might be to
>>> write a "papersize=default" \special instead if the \pdfpage
>>> {width,height} parameters are unset; the driver would then revert to
>>> its default media size (from a config-file or command-line).
>> 
>> That should be sufficient. I agree with that.
> 
> Where does this  \special  need to occur within the output, for it
> to have the correct effect with the back-end driver programs:
>    xdv2pdf    and   xdvipdfmx  ?
> Does it have to be at the top of the page, or is anywhere sufficient ?

So far the papersize special can appear everywhere. The same should
be possible for \special{papersize=default}. 

Ciao
Andreas