bug#25601: Possible need for an update to the \TeX "preview" package.

[Arash Esbati]

Hi Emmanuel,

Emmanuel Charpentier <address@hidden> writes:

> I recently stumbled on a  problem that is not specifically bound to
> preview, but shows that a (slight) revision may be in order. See the
> transcript of a thread in comp.text.tex at
> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.text.tex/umzerAdDkX0 .
>
> Working on this problem, I saw that preview had an option specific to
> the XeLaTeX compiler. This made me think that an analogous solution
> was needed for the LuaTeX compiler, which uses the same mechanisms for
> font loading and font metrics. However, I do not know welle enough the
> internals of these engines to determine if the solution used for
> XeLaTeX can be applied to LuaTeX, of if specific actions are needed.
>
> Do you think that a slight revision of your package could be done (if
> only to document how to use it with LuaLaTeX) ?

Thanks for your report.  For the records, LuaTeX and pdfTeX used to
share some primitives like \pdfoutput, \pdfvorigin, \pdfhorigin,
\pdfpageheight and \pdfpagewidth.  With the advent of LuaTeX 0.85,
LuaTeX uses other names for these primitives and hence the code in
preview.sty does not work with this engine.

One can solve the issue by doing:

    \RequirePackage{luatex85}
    \documentclass{article}
    ...

I will try to update this in preview.pdf.  But the real solution will
have to wait.

Best, Arash