[Bug-AUCTeX] Request to add support for xetex in preview.sty

[R (Chandra) Chandrasekhar]

Dear Sir,

I am writing to you as the maintainer of the preview package. Thsi is
not so much a bug report as a feature request.

Last year, I filed a feature request at the XeTeX home page at
sourceforge.net

https://sourceforge.net/tracker2/?func=detail&aid=1977445&group_id=194926&atid=951388

like so:

------ Quote -----
The preview.sty package allows standalone PDFs to be generated from
TikZ-PGF for example, to be included as graphics in other .tex files. In
its current form it does not work with xelatex.

Jonathan Kew posted a hack that allows the preview package to be used
with the exact syntax as with pdflatex. It is available here:

http://tug.org/pipermail/xetex/attachments/20080228/425c00a5/attachment-000
1.obj

as attachment to:

http://tug.org/pipermail/xetex/2008-February/008897.html

As far as I can make out, the hacked version is also pdflatex-compatible.

My request is for this hack to be incorporated into preview.sty and for
this hacked preview.sty to be bundled in TEXMF/tex/xelatex of the xetex
source tree, as for example, url.sty is at present.

Many thanks.

Chandra
------ Unquote -----

Jonathan Kew, the author of XeTeX replied so at:

https://sourceforge.net/tracker2/?func=detail&aid=1977445&group_id=194926&atid=951388

------ Quote -----
"Please submit a request to the preview.sty maintainer, and ask for this
to be reviewed and incorporated as an update to the standard preview
package.

I would prefer not to maintain or distribute "hacked" copies of standard
packages with xetex. (Yes, I know we did it with url.sty, but that is
being withdrawn from the xetex tree, as I understand the standard
url.sty is now xetex-compatible. This was more of a special case, as
url.sty gets loaded by many documents/packages, and it was preventing
successful compilation.)

If you need a workaround while waiting for preview.sty to be updated, I
suggest creating a small "preview-xelatex.sty" package that simply loads
preview.sty and then redefines the appropriate macros. This could be
distributed through CTAN like any other package, and then "retired" if
and when the main preview package becomes xetex-compatible."
------ Unquote -----

Accordingly, I am writing to you to request support for XeTeX in the
next revision of preview.sty if you could kindly find the time.

Meanwhile, I am using Jonathan's hack in my preamble to get preview to 
work with xelatex.

Thank you.

Chandra
16 Jan 09
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Dr R (Chandra) Chandrasekhar
Adjunct Senior Lecturer
M018, Centre for Intelligent Information Processing Systems (CIIPS)
School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering
The University of Western Australia
35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009, AUSTRALIA
Office: +61-(8)-6488-3856  Fax: +61-(8)-6488-1168
email: address@hidden  web: http://www.ee.uwa.edu.au/~chandra/
CRICOS Provider Code: 00126G
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