[tex-live] inclusion of pdf figures in tex-live 2015

[Zdenek Wagner]

Hi Robert,

the problem is that newer versions of PDF offer features that are not
supported in the previous versions. Suppose that the PDF header says
that the version is 1.5 but it includes PDF 1.7. If the engine
undestands 1.7, nothing happens and it will work. However, if the
engine does not support newer versions, it will be happy to see that
it is 1.5 according to the header but then it will crash. It is
difficult to say which version is needed. If your document has to be
printed by offset or by digital printing machines, you have to stick
with PDF 1.3, although more modern machines can cope with newer
versions of PDF.
Zdeněk Wagner
http://ttsm.icpf.cas.cz/team/wagner.shtml
http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz


2015-07-18 1:30 GMT+02:00 Robert B. Gozzoli <r.b.gozzoli at gmail.com>:
> Dear Karl,
> thus, as normal user, should we stick to PDF 1.5 as format for any PDF
> to be attached? I talk as user only.
> I tried to google a bit, but I do not know or understand why newer PDF
> formats cannot be processed without warning or anything. It might be
> for compatibility with older files - I understand that - but some
> users might question it.
> A final question. Akira suggested to put V 7 in dvipdfmx.cfg.
> If I do so, will it work even for whenever dvipdfm will be updated?
> And is it advisable for me doing such a change?
>
> Rob
>
> On 18 July 2015 at 06:04, Karl Berry <karl at freefriends.org> wrote:
>>     I think xdvipdfmx should produce PDF-1.5,
>>
>> It does, so far as I know.  That's the "V 5" in dvipdfmx.cfg.
>>
>>     all pdfLaTeX, dvipdfmx, LuaLaTeX produce PDF-1.5 as output.
>>
>> Right.  This is not a coincidence.
>>
>>     I think the default output-driver as "xdvipdfmx -q -E" should be
>>     changed to "xdvipdfmx -E",
>>
>> The messages cited earlier in this thread seem far too verbose to be
>> useful to me to enable by default.  A reasonable person seeing such junk
>> spewed out of their xetex run could not conclude "oh, that's why my
>> figures are blank, and so I should do xxx to fix it".
>>
>> The question in my mind is what exactly was changed, and why, and is
>> there a workaround, and can we change it back?  jjgod, khaled, someone,
>> please speak up?  I have no way to know without trawling through all the
>> source changes, which I can't do today.
>>
>> We also clearly need a NEWS file for dvipdfm-x, so that there is a place
>> for such places to be noted.  Whoever makes the next user-visible change
>> to the program, please start one!
>>
>> karl