[XeTeX] Experiences with XeTeX on Debian Sarge and Ubuntu Edgy Eft

[Christoph Bier]

Hello,

because the Ubuntu debs of the XeTeX homepage have unmet
dependencies on Debian Sarge I downloaded the XeTeX und xdvipdfmx
sources for building my own debs (BTW: I had to make configure and
debian/rules executable). After removing hungarian and serbian
hyphenation patterns all formats have been built successfully. But
compiling a document fails because of an undefined control sequence
(\do) in url.sty. I found out that the XeTeX package provides its
own, older url.sty (ver 3.1) that is not used here by xelatex
because the newer one is found first ($TEXMFHOME is searched before
$TEXMFLOCAL). For some reason I can't remember I need the new
url.sty (ver 3.2). But even if I copy XeTeX's url.sty in the
directory with the document to compile (Will Robertson's XeTeX
reference guide (v0.2)) I get another undefined control sequence
(this is still true if I copy all .sty and .tex files provided by
XeTeX in this directory):

! Undefined control sequence.
\Gm at checkdrivers ...fined \else \ifnum \pdfoutput
                                                  =\@ne
\Gm at setdriver {pdfte...
l.71 \begin{document}


Installation of the Ubuntu debs (I'm aware that they are for Dapper)
fails for Edgy with the following message:

texhash: Updating /home/chris/texmf/ls-R...
texhash: Updating /usr/local/share/texmf/ls-R...
texhash: Updating /var/lib/texmf/ls-R-TEXMFMAIN...
texhash: Updating /var/lib/texmf/ls-R-TEXMFDIST-TETEX...
texhash: Updating /var/cache/fonts/ls-R...
texhash: Updating /var/lib/texmf/ls-R...
texhash: Done.
[: 76: ==: unexpected operator
/var/lib/dpkg/info/xetex.postinst: 76: -p:: not found
/var/lib/dpkg/info/xetex.postinst: 76: -p:: not found
/var/lib/dpkg/info/xetex.postinst: 76: -p:: not found
/var/lib/dpkg/info/xetex.postinst: 76: -p:: not found

(BTW: Edgy ships with TeXLive debs besides the teTeX debs. Will
dependencies of XeTeX be adapted for TeXLive users? IMHO it makes
sense because Thomas Esser doesn't make new releases of teTeX any more.)

I built my own debs again (now on Ubuntu Edgy) but with the same
results (same message as above).

Best Regards,
	Christoph
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