\adjustbox with XeLaTeX misplaces hyperlinks

Question

This is minimal (not) working example that comes from much bigger document:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{adjustbox}
\usepackage{hyperref}

\begin{document}

\newcommand\hreftt[2]{%
    \href{#1}{\texttt{#2}}%
}
\newcommand{\rubylink}{\href{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_(programming_language)}{Ruby}}
\newcommand{\erlanglink}{\href{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlang_(programming_language)}{Erlang}}
\newcommand{\pythonlink}{\href{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_(programming_language)}{Python}}
\newcommand{\powershelllink}{\href{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerShell}{PowerShell}}
\begin{table}
    \begin{adjustbox}{max width=\textwidth}
    \begin{tabular}{l|l|l|l|l}
        Programming language & \rubylink         & \rubylink, \erlanglink  & \pythonlink, \powershelllink  & \pythonlink           \\\hline
        Something            & aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa & bbbbbbbbbbbbb           & ccccccccccccc                 & dddddddddddddddddddd
    \end{tabular}
    \end{adjustbox}
    \caption{This is test}
\end{table}

\end{document}

When I compile it with the command latexmk -pdf it produces correct PDF:

But when I compile with XeLaTeX, like that: latexmk -pdf -pdflatex=xelatex it produces:

Unfortunately I need to use XeLaTeX and the above example needs to produce correct PDF. How can I fix misplaced hyperlinks?

Answer 1

Scaling a tabular is bad typesetting. It leads to uneven font sizes.

Your problem is due to a change in xetex.def which broke skaling of link areas. This problem affects a current texlive 2016, texlive 2017 pretest and a current miktex.

As a workaround until the problem is resolved you can try to revert to the older definition by adding to your document.

\makeatletter
\def\Gscale@start{%
  \special{x:gsave}\special{x:scale \Gscale@x\space\Gscale@y}}
\makeatletter

You can also use tikz instead as it scales links area when xelatex is used correctly (it doesn't with pdflatex)

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{adjustbox,tikz}
\usepackage{hyperref}

\begin{document}\parskip1cm
\newcommand{\rubylink}{\href{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_(programming_language)}{Ruby}}

abc \rubylink cde

\scalebox{2}{abc \rubylink cde}

\tikz[scale=2,transform shape]\node[inner sep=0]{abc \rubylink cde};

\end{document}