[XeTeX] Ubuntu Dapper A4 vs letter problem

[Jacob Marble]

Hello list-
  I am using Ubuntu Dapper with the dapper XeTeX package from the
XeTeX website to process LaTeX.  I'm very unfamiliar with the TeX
system and all of its components.
  When I run xelatex on anything, the PDF paper size always ends up
A4, not 8.5" x 11".  I found a program called texconfig and I have run
it both as root and as an unprivileged user to set the default paper
size to 8.5" x 11".  This fixed the problem for the latex command and
also for the pdflatex command, but xelatex doesn't seem to look in the
same place for its settings.
  As an example, the following outputs in A4 with XeLaTeX, but in 8.5"
x 11" with anything else.

\documentclass[letterpaper]{article}
\begin{document}
Some text.
\end{document}

  Has anyone else encountered such a problem?  Does XeTeX not use
TeTeX's configuration settings?

TIA,

Jake

-- 
Email Outhouse
Jacob Marble
435 760 4321
jacobmarble at gmail.com