[Textures] Beta 11 is out

Bruno Voisin bvoisin at me.com
Wed Aug 19 10:42:22 EDT 2009


Le 19 août 09 à 13:21, Paolo Matteucci a écrit :

> I’d like to ask you a somewhat related question. My two main  
> problems with Textures have always been that it doesn’t support (or  
> didn’t use to support —not quite sure where we’ve got to with the  
> latest beta release) hyperref fully and, much more importantly, (2)  
> [although Textures was probably the first TeX program ever to be  
> able to access "system fonts" easily] there isn’t [yet] a way to  
> access [à la XeTeX, say] all AAT/OT font glyphs [easily]…
>
> What are your thoughts about these two points? Have you got any  
> "inside information" about if and when these issues might be resolved?

Hi Paolo,

No I've no inside information about Textures, unfortunately.

And about your two questions, I'm afraid the answer is also a "I don't  
know" to both. I checked about hyperref support and it appears it's  
not supported, even with the [hypertex] option.

BTW, the Textures drivers htexture.def for hyperref and textures.def  
for graphics/x have both been written for Classic Textures (version  
2.1 and below) and don't really work with OS X Textures. For example,  
with the graphics/x package each graphics inclusion in the log window  
will yield a message "Graphic file (Type EPSF)" even though the  
graphics file is not an EPSF. Here's what I'm getting with a PNG file:

	File: figs-png/singcylamphor.png Graphic file (type EPSF)

This message is not generated by Textures but by textures.def, I  
imagine by the following line:

     \ProvidesFile{#3}[Graphic file (type #1)]%

But in any case the PNG file is correctly included, independent of  
what the Log says.

Back to hyperref: At the time I still had a PPC Mac, I looked at the  
way hyperlinks worked with Classic Textures and realized this way was  
different from the way we're used to now with PDF output. You didn't  
just need to click on a hyperlink, you needed to use a modifier key  
(probably Cmd i.e. the Apple or clover key, but I'm not sure). So it's  
no surprise it will have to be re-implemented in some way to work the  
way we're used to now (and which we need: my need with hyperlinks is  
to produce PDF files that I can send for work to people so they can  
use them in Acrobat or Preview or any PDF viewer, not to produce  
hyperlinks which only work in Textures).

It's probably also not trivial, as Textures for now can only produce  
PDF files through the Print dialog, by printing to a PDF file. But so  
doing so creates PDF files with no hyperlinks, only the visual aspect  
of the output is reserved in the PDF file created by Apple's Quartz  
framework. There must be some way to circumvent this limitation, as  
iWork (Pages etc.) export PDF files with hyperlinks while using the  
Quartz framework.

As for the fonts, I don't know what's planned. The TeX Metrics window  
(in the Window menu) gives a rough idea about what Textures knows  
about fonts. In particular if you click on the "PostScript name"  
column header you'll see the fonts used in the current preview window  
come to the top of the column. That's about all I know.

It seems in any case what we could do with the last versions of  
Classic Textures -- use any font known to the OS by using a special  
syntax for calling it (I don't remember this syntax) -- is not yet  
implemented in OS X Textures. I don't know either if there are plans  
of Unicode support and OpenType support. I hope so.

Cheers,

Bruno

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