On Fri, Mar 07, 2008 at 07:56:18AM -0600, Brad Burkman wrote:

I run pdfTeX 3.141592-1.20a (MiKTeX 2.4) on one computer, and pdfTeX 3.141529-1.40.4 (MiKTeX 2.6) on another. When I compile the following text:

\pdfcatalog{/PageMode/UseOutlines}

\pdfdest name{(-19,-17),(5,25),(17,19)} fit

\pdfoutline goto name{(-19,-17),(5,25),(17,19)}{(-19,-17),(5,25),(17,19)}

on the earlier version, everything works just fine. With the later version, however, I get an outline pane but no bookmarks. Just a blank pane. Has there been a syntax change? Perhaps different versions of Acrobat? Windows XP v/s Vista?

Error message of xpdf: Error (54): Dictionary key must be a name object And the PDF shows: 1 0 obj << /S /GoTo /D (-19,-17),(5,25),(17,19) >> endobj The surrounding parentheses are missing. pdftex.web, procedure pdf_print_str(s: str_number): ... if (str_pool[i] = '(') and (str_pool[j] = ')') then begin pdf_print(s); return; end; ... * First the test is insufficient, as the example shows. The test for a hex string is better. * Also it looks like a design error. I doubt, a user would suspect that \pdfdest name {abc} fit and \pdfdest name {(abc)} fit and \pdfdest name {<616263>} fit are using the same destination name. * Another BUG: \pdfdest name{a} fit \pdfdest name{(x)} fit \end The result is a wrong destination name tree: /Names [(x) 5 0 R (a) 4 0 R] /Limits [(x) (a)] `x' is sorted as destination name "(x)", but written as destination name "x". I think, pdfTeX shouldn't assume special meanings of the destination names. The byte string from the token list of keyword "name" should be the destination name without special meanings. And if pdfTeX writes the name, it takes care of the protection of special characters. Otherwise the user would have to use \pdfdest name{(\pdfescapestring{...})}... \pdfdest name{<\pdfescapehex{...}>}... to get control over the exact name. This isn't a good design, because implementation issues leaks into the user interface. Yours sincerely Heiko