[XeTeX] unusual output

[Jonathan Kew]

On 18 Sep 2007, at 9:52 pm, Barbara Shirtcliff wrote:

> I'm using xelatex with natbib and bibtex, and, to my great joy, it
> appears to be working (which means that I can now work with unicode
> and still have my footnotes work out), but there is a strange message,
> which is printed at the very top of the pdfs thus produced.  It says
> "[zf]prepareseRendererATT,ICU"

This looks like a (slightly garbled -- mistyped?) fragment of macro  
code from fontspec.sty. It shouldn't be appearing as printed output,  
though.

Try simplifying your document (remove all the content except a couple  
of sentences, and eliminate extra packages) to see if you can either  
determine some particular package that triggers this, or bring it  
down to a short example that still misbehaves, and which you can then  
post for others to test?


>
> Actually, I'd prefer not to mess with my xetex installation if I don't
> have to.  I just have the MacPorts version, which has the virtue of
> being easy to use.

I'm not familiar with the MacPorts setup, but it's possible that it  
includes an older version of fontspec (or another package such as  
xkeyval that it uses), and this is leading to problems.

What happens if you try a really simple test such as:

   \documentclass{article}
   \usepackage{fontspec}
   \setmainfont[Mapping=tex-text]{Lucida Grande}
   \begin{document}
   This is a test.
   \end{document}

If that still gives you "strange" text at the start of the PDF, then  
something is fundamentally broken in your installation; if not, then  
I suspect an interaction with some other package(s) you're using;  
experimentation will be needed to determine exactly which.

JK