[XeTeX] Making a .fmt file using XeTeX

Jonathan Kew jonathan_kew at sil.org
Sat Feb 19 13:42:51 CET 2005


On 19 Feb 2005, at 9:57 am, Stephen Moye wrote:

> I'm getting further now,
> but with:
>
> xetex -ini "&xetex" Genealogue.tex
>
> I'm getting this error:
>
> ! Can't \dump a format with preloaded native fonts.
> <*> &xetex Genealogue.tex
>
> ?
>

Well, as the messages says, it can't do that. Sorry. It's too risky. 
Suppose you uninstall the OS X fonts that your format specified, and 
then try to use it with xetex....

Rather than trying to gracefully handle the various error conditions 
that could arise (as part of reloading the format? at first use of each 
font?), I took the easy way out and decided that such format files are 
not allowed. If you have a collection of macros (like LaTeX and a bunch 
of favorite packages, or your own custom macro set) that you want to 
preload, that's fine, but leave the actual font definitions for 
runtime.

(Traditional tfm-based fonts are a different matter, because then the 
metrics are dumped as part of the format, and will remain available 
even if the .tfm file is subsequently removed.)

JK



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