[OS X TeX] Package incompatability?

[Herbert Schulz]

On Jan 19, 2009, at 9:10 PM, Ross Moore wrote:

> 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


Howdy,

The problem doesn't seem to need double columns. I commented out the  
geometry related lines and used the article class and got the same  
problem. I haven't tried out your fix yet but I'd guess it works since  
it restores the box that is ``expected''.
Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)