OK, so here's the scenario:

1. upgraded Mac to OS X 10.9 (currently 10.9.1, in fact)
2. re-installed latest PrinceXML
3. tried creating test PDF files from command line with: prince http://testurl -o test.pdf -v
4. output was as follows

prince: Loading document...
prince: loading document: http://testurl/test.html
prince: loading HTML5 input: http://testurl/test.html
prince: loading document: http://testurl/test.html
prince: http://testurl/test.html: error: couldn't connect to host
prince: http://testurl/test.html: error: could not load input file
prince: error: no input documents to process

5. ran curl against same URL, works fine
6. checked logs - apache isn't even firing up when Prince runs
7. ran prince against daringfireball.net - works fine

The page loads OK in the browser - I had to fix a couple of things with the Apache config as Apple loves breaking it between versions, but I cannot detect a single reason why this might be failing.

That is strange. So Prince is handling other HTTP URLs without any trouble, but failing on one specific host? And it is HTTP, not HTTPS? Which curl version do you have installed?

Hi Mike,

Yep, HTTP not HTTPS.

curl version is:

curl 7.30.0 (x86_64-apple-darwin13.0) libcurl/7.30.0 SecureTransport zlib/1.2.5

Could be a problem in my apache setup (though it's not even hitting apache, so maybe not) but I can't coax anything more detailed in terms of error reporting out of PrinceXML itself.

Currently Prince is statically linked with curl 7.19.5, and the Prince binary is 32-bit. We could try dynamically linking with the system curl library, and see if that helps.

OK, so I should wait for the next release? Or is there a beta I could test out?

I'll have a new build ready to test in a few hours; I'll email you a link when it's ready.

You champion.

For future reference, it seems that dynamic linking with libcurl fixes the problem on MacOS X Mavericks. We will adopt this solution for the next maintenance release, and keep a statically linked build available for backwards compatibility with older MacOS X releases.

Today we have released Prince 9 rev 5, which includes numerous changes intended to improve compatibility with MacOS X Mavericks. Please let us know if you have any further issues!