Dashed draw with a node including a fraction

Question

Is this intended behavior (with plain XeTeX):

\input tikz
\tikz\draw[dashed] node {$3T\over4$};
\bye

It renders as: enter image description here !?

The fraction line is dashed, too! Is this intentional? Is there something I can do to change that? I know I can separate the fraction into its own node, but other than that?

I can't reproduce this. When I run the file through TeX and view the DVI it's just a regular line, same when I then convert it to pdf and view that. — Roelof Spijker, Mar 21 '12 at 14:37
@RoelofSpijker: A-ha! It doesn't happen with pdftex, but with xetex. — morbusg, Mar 21 '12 at 14:40
Status no repo. Tried with LaTeX running pdflatex, tried also with tex on the commandline with your exact code. Both times, I get a good solid line across. Could it be a version issue? — Andrew Stacey, Mar 21 '12 at 14:40
@AndrewStacey, RoelofSpijker: I've edited the question accordingly. — morbusg, Mar 21 '12 at 14:46
With \tikz\draw[dashed] node {\vrule height 1pt width 1cm}; the rule is dashed with XeTeX, but not with (pdf)TeX. It's a driver bug/feature. — egreg, Mar 21 '12 at 14:48

score 7 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 21 '12 at 14:50

At a guess, what's happening is that the dashed is getting applied to a low-level scope which includes the horizontal line from the fraction. So, without knowing the gory details, there's some conversation something like:

TeX: Okay, we're drawing dashed lines here
PDF: Right, setting lines to dashed
TeX: Now, we need to draw a fraction
PDF: A what?
TeX: I mean, draw a 3T a little high, a 4 a little low, and draw a line in between
PDF: Gotcha, oh and I presume that the "dashed" still applies to the line

Presumably in other systems, the method for drawing the lines from PGF and the lines from other stuff don't end up mixed like that.

A proper solution would involve sorting out the scoping so that the dashed doesn't apply to the line. A hack is to negate the dashed when processing the node. Being me, I'm going for the hack:

\input tikz
\tikz\draw[dashed] node[solid] {$3T\over4$};
\bye

Andrew, I'm very happy with this solution, thank you very much! — morbusg, Mar 21 '12 at 15:03

Dashed draw with a node including a fraction

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