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

[Jonathan Kew]

On 24 Oct 2006, at 4:57 pm, Christoph Bier wrote:

> Yes, I found out that xelatex searches the wrong path and I don't
> know why.

check the TEXINPUTS.xelatex setting in texmf.cnf -- it should  
explicitly name the "tex/xelatex" subtree....
>
> And there's the following:
>
> chris at lotus:~$ grep xelatex /etc/texmf/texmf.cnf
> TEXINPUTS.xelatex = .;$TEXMF/tex/{latex,generic,}//

ah, yes... this means that files under tex/latex (even in texmf- 
tetex) will take precedence over files under tex/xelatex (even in  
texmf-local).

> (/usr/share/texmf-tetex/tex/latex/base/ucmtt.fd)
> ! Font \zf at basefont="" not loadable: installed font not found.
> <to be read again>
>                    \zf at family@fontdefcmtt
> l.378

i don't recognize this issue; maybe Will will know what could cause it?

> Is there a document describing the pitfalls when migrating from
> (pdf)latex to xelatex? And maybe another document that describes how
> to install OpenType fonts in Debian Sarge or GNOME =/?

For GNOME, you can just copy the files into ~/.fonts, I think, or  
install through the Fonts preference applet (it has a button to take  
you to the Fonts folder, where you can simply drag in the files).

(Sorry, I don't have a machine in front of me at the moment, so this  
is a little vague....)

>> I don't have an Edgy machine yet, and won't have an opportunity to
>> try this any time soon, but could it be because /bin/sh is no longer
>> bash but dash?
>
> I don't think so:
>
> chris at skull:~$ echo $SHELL
> /bin/bash
>
> (where skull is my Edgy laptop)

This indicates that your default login shell is /bin/bash, but /bin/ 
sh (which is used to execute the postinst script) is probably linked  
to dash instead (from what I've read online). I don't know whether  
that explains the error you're seeing, but you could test it by  
modifying the #! line to explicitly request /bin/bash.

JK