[OS X TeX] Package incompatability?

[Ross Moore]

Hi Jim,

On 20/01/2009, at 11:07 AM, Jim Reeds wrote:

> Peter,
>
> You are right, the 'book'  is better for book than
> the 'report' class.  But that doesn't explain why mparhack,
> crop, and makeidx don't work together.

The problem is caused by  mparhack  ,
but the easiest fix requires a small addition to  crop.sty .

Here is the cause of the difficulty:

   mparhack  redefines the LaTeX internal  \hb at xt@
when doing double-column output, as in the Index.

Unfortunately, crop.sty (and perhaps some other packages)
need to use the unmodified version when doing the final
page-building.

It's the combination of double-column, mparhack and crop marks
that trigger this bug; though it probably also appears with

  (i) double-columns in  book/report/article (w/out Index)
      with  mparhack  and  crop.sty ;

  (ii) double-column output  with  mparhack  and anything
      that adds material to the page within the output
      routine (e.g. background images)
      using \hb at xt@  as a macro for  '\hbox to ' .



The fix:

Modify the coding around line 364 of crop.sty  to look
as below, by adding the line with the '% RRM:'

\newcommand*\CROP at kernel{%
     \vbox to\z@{%
         \def\hb at xt@{\hbox to}% RRM: for compatibility with  mparhack
         \vskip\CROP at vorigin
         \hb at xt@\z@{%

Note, this need not be the *best* way (in terms of program
efficiency) to solve the problem, but it is the simplest
workaround for a non-expert to implement.

>
> Section 2.5 of the  crop.pdf document shown by 'texdoc crop',
> by Melchior Franz, 20 May 2003, says to disable the driver options
> in geometry when using the crop package.
>


> -- 
> Jim Reeds       reeds at idaccr.org        +1 609 279 6362

Hope this helps,

	Ross

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Ross Moore                                       ross at maths.mq.edu.au
Mathematics Department                           office: E7A-419
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