[tex-live] Bad .cfg files in TeX source tree?

[David Kastrup]

Heiko Oberdiek <oberdiek at uni-freiburg.de> writes:

> On Fri, Jan 19, 2007 at 04:50:53PM +0100, Frank Küster wrote:
>
>> David Kastrup <dak at gnu.org> wrote:
>> 
>> > "Zdenek Wagner" <zdenek.wagner at gmail.com> writes:
>> >
>> >> 2007/1/19, David Kastrup <dak at gnu.org>:
>> >>> Jonathan Kew <jonathan_kew at sil.org> writes:
>> >>> ...
>> >>
>> >>> I think this is too complicated.  Packages should just check whether
>> >>> \pdfpagewidth is defined and set it if it is.
>> >>>
>> >>> Whether the actual engine is PDFTeX, XeTeX, Aleph or whatever else is
>> >>> rather irrelevant.
>> >>>
>> >> If \pdfoutput=0, \pdfpagewidth is available but has no effect.
>> >
>> > Setting it would nevertheless not do any harm.
>> 
>> Hm, shouldn't it usually write papersize \specials in the dvi file,
>> then, suitable for dvips or dvipdfm, respectively?
>
> Usually these specials set the papersize for the whole dvi file
> with *all* pages. \pdfpagewidth, \pdfpageheight can also set
> the papersize for individual pages. I don't know, how XeTeX
> behaves.

One can use PostScript specials to change the page dimensions in the
middle of a document (preview.sty does this with its "tightpage"
option).

It might be worth an idea to implement some interface for passing such
changes through.  On the other hand, this sounds like it could require
mucking with \everyshi or similar, and that might not be the nicest
idea.

Another possibility would be if pdfTeX would emit the respective
PostScript specials on its own in DVI mode when doing a \shipout and
\pdfpagewidth/\pdfpageheight have changed.

-- 
David Kastrup