[XeTeX] xetex updates

David Cottenden d.cottenden at ucl.ac.uk
Fri Oct 9 10:22:02 CEST 2009


brindle at stud.ntnu.no wrote:
> You mentioned
>
> "
> did you tick the little box (in gui - don't know
> how it appears in cmd) that tells the installer to place its sim links
> in the /usr/ bin directory, etc? That ensures that the TL'08 programmes
> are called, not the Ubuntu packaged versions.
> "
>
> This is exactly what I realise later. Even though one deletes all 
> texlive packages in synaptic, there is some 'tex stuff lying around'. 
> I thought that upgrading xetex would have been the easiest. Now it say 
> that I have to redirect
> tex somehow to look in this usr/local/2008 folder. Yes, I'm now in the 
> gui of texlive 08, what should I do
> there exactly (what's a sim link?)? I'll be very grateful for the help!
Actually, there's no need to remove the Ubuntu packages - the two quite 
happily coexist, it would seem - but there's not much point having both, 
I suppose.

I can't see anything that in tlmgr that allows you to retrospectively 
"plumb everything in", so if you haven't been upgrading and customising 
packages all over the place it's probably frankly easiest to just 
uninstall TL'08 and have another go! Ticking the little box this time...

However, since this is sort of the "nuclear option", I'd give it a few 
hours in case someone with more know-how than me has a better idea: this 
will certainly do it, but there may be a more elegant way that involved 
less downloading...

Hope that helps,

David

PS. I sim link (which mine don't seem to be, which is rather surprising) 
is a little file system trick that looks like a file, but in fact just 
points to another. (Almost) anything that you "do to the sim link" you 
in fact do to the file it points at. It's a bit like a reference in C++. 
As to how it differs from a hard link, I am afraid that I don't know! 
Sim links are typically used to make a directory structure conform to 
several different expectations without introducing multiple versions of 
files; for example, many executable files live in /usr/bin (and the OS 
expects them there), but if programme A wants to find foo in 
/opt/bar/bin, for instance, then putting a sim link to foo in 
/opt/bar/bin satisfies the OS and programme A without multiple real 
copies of foo being created.

Make sense?

-- 
David Cottenden
PhD Student
Continence and Skin Technology Group
UCL

Phone: +44 (0)20 7288 3771
Fax: +44 (0)20 7288 3019 



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