[XeTeX] Installing xetex in Linux

[maxwell at umiacs.umd.edu]

>> OK I meant soft link, which is a common  alternative to
>> symbolic link.
>
> How can something wrong be an alternative? First there were hard-
> links, which are restricted to their file system. Then symbolic links
> were added, which simulate the behaviour of hard-links and break
> through the file system barrier. So why don't you use the term new-
> link or alternative-link or alt-link? There is nothing soft, they all
> exist hard on the hard disk. Nothing is imagined. Or soft.

>From that authoritative source, the Wikipedia:
   In computing, a symbolic link (also symlink or soft link)
   is a special type of file that contains a reference to
   another file or directory...
As a linguist, I find nothing _wrong_ with the term "soft link"; it's just
an alternative name to "symbolic link", as is "symlink."

As for their being nothing soft about a symlink, there's nothing hard
about a "hard link", either; the fact that it is on a hard disk no more
makes it hard than the fact that a car is parked in a garage makes the car
a garage.

So let's move on to something more edifying...

   Mike Maxwell