Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!oberon!cit-vax!ucla-cs!sonia!khayo
From: khayo@sonia.math.ucla.edu (Eric Behr)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: TeXtures from Addison Wesley
Message-ID: <12095@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Date: 8 May 88 08:57:45 GMT
Sender: news@CS.UCLA.EDU
Reply-To: khayo@MATH.ucla.edu (Eric Behr)
Lines: 17

In article I wrote:
 >By the way, has anyone used \special{postscriptfile foo} in TeXtures?
 >A rather trivial PostScript picture works fine with VAX TeX, but throws
 >TeXtures off the track - lines following the picture are superimposed
 >(a dark black mess); next page is OK. Any clues ? Thanks in advance.
I ran some tests, and I'm sorry for asking a question that was easy to
answer. In case there are other people who want to use PostScript, I'll
share the outcome: in some PostScript macros I had variables called,
oddly enough, x, y etc. Miraculously, when x was changed to, say, xx, the
problem went away. It also disappeared when the variables were put in a
local dictionary. It seems that the PostScript commands in TeXtures affect
TeX storage area, due to the integration (TeXtures probably skips the
dvi phase altogether; that's why the problem didn't surface on the VAX,
where PostScript gets included by dvi2ps and is therefore isolated from
the TeX environment). I hope *someone* will be spared hours of frustration.

                                                       Eric