[XeTeX] (no subject)

[Jonathan Kew]

On 5 May 2006, at 12:33 am, Bruno Voisin wrote:

> Le 4 mai 06 à 18:29, Christophe DAMAS a écrit :
>
>> Excuse moi de te déranger, suite à ta réponse sur XeTeX.
>> Effectivement je suis bien en mode non étendu. J'ai refait le
>> format xetex pour inclure la césure française, mais je n'arrive pas
>> à comprendre la syntaxe avec cette mystérieuse étoile pour obtenir
>> un format en mode étendu. As-tu une idée ?
>
> Given this may be a topic of interest for other XeTeX users, I'm
> answering in English and cc'ing the XeTeX list. For the non-French
> speakers, the problem is: the OP recompiled the XeTeX format to
> include French hyphenation, but doesn't know how to specify that
> extended mode must be activated (how to include the "*" before
> xetex.ini in the format creation command)).

To activate extended mode, you need an initial "*" in the first input/ 
command line. So to build a format entirely "manually", something  
like this should work (incomplete example, just the outline of the  
procedure):

	$ xetex -ini
	This is XeTeX....... (INITEX)
	***plain    <<- note the extra "*" typed after tex's "**" prompt
	entering extended mode
	(plain.tex
	.....)
	*\input unicode-letters
	*\input frhyph
	*\dump

Or you can do it all from a single command line with:

	xetex -ini -jobname=frxetex \*plain \\input unicode-letters \\input  
frhyph \\dump

Or you can make a file "frxetex.ini", similar to xetex.ini, but with  
the extra input lines to load french patterns. Then either use it  
manually:

	xetex -ini \*frxetex.ini

or add a new entry to fmtutil.cnf, and use fmtutil-sys to build and  
install the .fmt file.

As you note, xetex is based on e-tex, so it should also be possible  
to use the etex macros to support multilingual hyphenation -- would  
that be the xeetex format? :) I haven't tried this, but it should be  
fairly simple, following the same pattern as above.

JK