[XeTeX] ArabXeTeX pre-release

[Anas Ghrab]

I'm very interrested with ArabXeTeX as I have problems with ArabTeX  
(for ex. footnotes). I didn't use XeTeX a lot but I follow its  
evolution so I do not know exactly how to install the package. All is  
installed on my OS X using the i-installer. I never got problems to  
install packages for LaTeX. But for ArabXeTeX I got :

This is XeTeX, Version 3.141592-2.2-0.99b (Web2C 7.5.3)
kpathsea: Running mktexfmt xetex.fmt
fmtutil: format directory `/Users/anas/Library/texmf/web2c' does not  
exist.
I can't find the format file `xetex.fmt'!

I do not really know where to place the files. I just placed them  
somewhere I found existing *.map. There are ones for font folder, but  
where to place the *.map of the source folder ?

Thanks for your help and for the package,
سلامات

---
Anas Ghrab

Le 28 nov. 06 à 01:43, François Charette a écrit :

> Dear all,
>
> It has been quite a while since I first announced my intention of  
> creating an ArabTeX-like interface for typesetting languages in the  
> Arabic script with XeTeX by means of TECkit mappings (last July I  
> guess). Now after many interruptions due to various academic  
> obligations, I am finally in a position to release an alpha version  
> of my ArabXeTeX package.
>
> ABSTRACT
> “This package provides a convenient ArabTeX-like user-interface  
> for typesetting
> languages using the Arabic script in XeLaTeX, with flexible access  
> to font
> features. Input in ArabTeX notation can be set in three different  
> vocalization
> modes or in roman transliteration. Direct UTF-8 input is also  
> supported.
> Since most of the ‘real work’ -- namely parsing and converting  
> ArabTeX input to
> Unicode is done at the level of TECkit mappings, ArabXeTeX is  
> really performant.”
>
> Languages supported at present are the same as in ArabTeX, namely:  
> Arabic, Maghribi Arabic, Farsi (Persian), Urdu, Sindhi, Kashmiri,  
> Ottoman Turkish, Kurdish, Jawi (Malay) and Uighur. ArabXeTeX adds  
> support for several additional Unicode characters, so that some  
> more languages are probably supporteSindhid de-facto as well (such  
> as Western Punjabi). Transliteration mappings are currently  
> available for Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Pashto and Sindhi.
>
> There are many many issues I have been facing during development of  
> this package which I would like to address on this list, but for  
> the moment I will simply invite all interested XeTeX users to  
> download the package, read the (still incomplete) PDF  
> documentation, and perhaps play around with all this. I would very  
> much appreciate your critical comments before uploading this to  
> CTAN. My plan is to have a beta version next week, and an official  
> release in 2-3 weeks, إن شاء الله.
>
> The package can be downloaded from http://ankabut.net/xetex/ 
> arabxetex.zip
> The documentation (included in the zip file) is also available  
> separately: http://ankabut.net/xetex/arabxetex-doc.pdf
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> سلامات
>
> François Charette