[XeTeX] c.t.t. post re: \mag

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:12:18 +0100 schrieb Bruno Voisin:

> All this talk about the pecularities of the PDF format, about / 
> MediaBox and such, feels like rhetorical nonsense for me: the only  
> thing that matters is that, with exactly the same input, the PDF page  
> displayed on screen when typesetting with pdfTeX should be absolutely  
> identical to the paper page output by a printer when typesetting with  
> TeX + dvips. This used to be the case before teTeX 2, but is no longer  
> true since teTeX 3, provided \mag or \magnification is involved.

It was never true. The pdf output can (and do) differ in many ways to
the dvi/ps output. E.g. it use different graphics, the breaking of links
is different, microtype features are different which means that
paragraph breaking and page breaking can change, fonts can be different,
color handling can differ, rounding and resolution can differ. 

A absolutly indentical output is very difficult to optain, a quite
identical output needs a least some careful setting of options and some
juggling with \ifpdf-switches. 

-- 
Ulrike Fischer