[XeTeX] xelatex not working

[Ralf Stubner]

Jonathan Kew <jonathan_kew at sil.org> writes:

> However, current TeX Live-based systems such as Joshua is  
> using seem to set the paths in texmf.cnf in such a way that texmf- 
> dist takes precedence over texmf-local, and so the newer version  
> isn't used. :(

I think it is more likely to be a problem of installation directory.
Current TeX Live contains in its texmf.cnf

% XeTeX
TEXINPUTS.xelatex = .;$TEXMF/tex/{latex,generic,}//
TEXINPUTS.xetex   = .;$TEXMF/tex/{plain,generic,}//

while Joshua installed in TEXMFLOCAL/tex/xelatex. The xelatex directory
is only searched after the latex and generic directories has been
searched *in all* TEXMF trees. 

Most of the files in the TEXMF tree comming with XeTeX could go into a
regular tree without problems. Interesting cases are only configuration
files  for certain LaTeX packages and hyphenation files.

cheerio
ralf