[XeTeX] How to manually create the xelatex.fmt?

[Susan Dittmar]

Quoting Peter Dyballa (Peter_Dyballa at web.de):
> What keeps you from installing TeX Live temporarily in /tmp and converting it into a "native package"?

Me personally? I never did that before and would have to delve into how to
create a native package. I had a look at this some time ago and decided my
need was not big enough for the effort it seemed to take. Could you tell me
how to do that for openSUSE from the top of your head? If it was easy, I'm
sure an up to date TeX were included in this distribution (and all the
others).

I have some friends who use Linux at home. Although intelligent people,
information technologies cannot hold their interest, and thus they are
nearly computer-illiterate. I taught them enough so they can make the
necessary updates using the distribution's packager.  Do I really want to
have to teach them a different way of updating for every tiny program they
use?

Admitted, TeXlive is not a tiny thing. Still it is just one program suite
among a lot of others. Helping users with the day-to-day administrational
work was the main reason why linux distributions have been invented. To
demand that users do their updates on a per-program base and by hand means
a big step backwards in this respect...

I really love tlmgr. I do use it extensively. And I am tremendously
grateful for all the effort put into that. But please rather think about
supporting distros so they package up to date TeX (or even trigger tlgmr)
instead of demanding that the end user uses yet another updating tool.

	Susan