Possible regression in the fall 2020 LaTeX release - interaction between xwatermark.sty and atbegshi

[gamboz]

Brief outline of the bug

Compiling the MWE below gives error with texlive 2020 installed today, but not with texlive 2020 installed around September 29th.

Since the xwatermark.sty file is the same, I think the issue may be related to the hooks in atbegshi / atbegshi-ltx.

For completeness, I do receive a warning about

/usr/local/texlive/2020/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/atbegshi-ltx.sty

LaTeX Warning: You have requested package `atbegshi',
               but the package provides `atbegshi-ltx'.

(and the same for atveryend).

Minimal example showing the bug

\RequirePackage{latexbug}
\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{xwatermark}

\begin{document}
test
\end{document}

Log and PDF file

Obtained with pdflatex mwe (and type "r" when prompted)

mwe.log
mwe.pdf

[PhelypeOleinik]

Running your test says:

(latexbug)                This test file uses third-party file(s)
(latexbug)                
(latexbug)                ==============
(latexbug)                xwatermark.sty
(latexbug)                test.xwm
(latexbug)                hyperref.sty  ->  LaTeX Team 
(latexbug)                    https://github.com/latex3/hyperref/issues
(latexbug)                ==============

and indeed catoptions (loaded by xwatermark) does some heavy patches to LaTeX macros, and this broke with the latest LaTeX release. The author of catoptions was notified, but there was no update so far.

You can try to patch over catoptions, but beware that it's a patch on top of another patch, so it's bound to break eventually.

\documentclass{article}

% catoptions patch (no guarantee that will work):
% must be applied before loading catoptions
\def\FIXcatoptions\endgroup#1\begingroup{#1}
\AddToHook{package/after/catoptions}
  {\gleftaddtocs\document{\FIXcatoptions}}

\usepackage{xwatermark}

\begin{document}
test
\end{document}

[FrankMittelbach]

> 
> LaTeX Warning: You have requested package `atbegshi',
>                but the package provides `atbegshi-ltx'.
> ```
> 
> 
> (and the same for atveryend).

that happens because xwatermark changes a lot if internal LaTeX macros through overwriting them or replacing them in a way that was never meant to be supported. It therefore now clobbers parts that handle this kind of warning. If you load these packages before xwatermark then the warnings go away (because at that point they are correctly handled). Of course, that doesn't solve the problem that xwartermark is overwriting internals in an now incompatible way.As @PhelypeOleinik said the author has been informed that his packages will break months back.

[gamboz]

Thank you all.
I've also asked the author of xwatermark if he can do something.

AFAICT the issue is not in LaTeX itself, so I'm closing it.

However, do you think it would be possible to "identify" packages not compatible with the current LaTeX macros so that they do not end up in standard distributions (telixve, miktex, etc.)?
I don't know if this is the right place to ask :)

[PhelypeOleinik]

Sometimes we can identify, and notify the maintainer (it happens quite often). But there are cases when the maintainer is not responsive for whatever reason, or that we didn't identify the incompatibility (it's TeX, after all, the possibilities for incompatibility are endless :-)

That said, no, we can't do much about those packages as long as they have a maintainer (if they don't, then we can ask CTAN to take over and fix them, which happens often too), let alone take it out of distributions (that would be rather bad, actually). The good option really is for the maintainer to fix the package.

[mrpiggi]

@gamboz For a feasible workaround and/or an up-to-date solution you might want to get rid of package xwaterwark at all and use scrlayer instead.

https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/400966/watermark-on-selected-pages-or-xwatermark-and-scrlayer-scrpage

[FrankMittelbach]

@gamboz For a feasible workaround and/or an up-to-date solution you might want to get rid of package xwaterwark at all and use scrlayer instead.

most likely no package is needed given that LaTeX now has the hooks shipout/background and shipout/foreground which are precisely for adding something onto each or just the next page (using \AddToHookNext). The hooks expect picture commands, ie they span a picture env with the topleft corner of the page being 0,0.

[gamboz]

@FrankMittelbach thank you for pointing out the new hooks. It solved my problem in less than 10 lines :)

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{graphicx}

\newcommand{\watermark}{%
  \fontfamily{ucr}\fontseries{m}\fontsize{40}{1}\selectfont%
  \color{gray}%
  \put(560,-120){%
    \rotatebox{-90}{Some watermark 123}
  }
}

\AddToHook{shipout/background}{\watermark}

\begin{document}
hi
\newpage

pg.2
\end{document}

[FrankMittelbach]

welcome, and one more advice ... since the fall release 2020 picture coordinates can be dimensions (in which case no \unitlength is used so something like .5\paperheight can be usefully employed

[ysalmon]

You can try to patch over catoptions, but beware that it's a patch on top of another patch, so it's bound to break eventually.

\documentclass{article}

% catoptions patch (no guarantee that will work):
% must be applied before loading catoptions
\def\FIXcatoptions\endgroup#1\begingroup{#1}
\AddToHook{package/after/catoptions}
  {\gleftaddtocs\document{\FIXcatoptions}}

\usepackage{xwatermark}

\begin{document}
test
\end{document}

This fix works great with the recent version of LaTeX but causes problems when compiling with an older version (which alas happens when compiling at work where LaTeX is not updated as frequently). I suggest to protect it with a version check like that TeX.SX answer.

\makeatletter   % if not in a package
\newcommand*\@iflatexlater{\@ifl@t@r\fmtversion}
\@iflatexlater{2020/10/01}{%
\def\FIXcatoptions\endgroup#1\begingroup{#1}
\AddToHook{package/after/catoptions}
  {\gleftaddtocs\document{\FIXcatoptions}}%
}{}
\makeatother   % if not in a package