[XeTeX] LaTeX features in XeTeX

[Jonathan Kew]

On 22 Jan 2007, at 8:09 pm, Nicholas Wilson wrote:

> Bizarre!  I've had all sorts of funny behaviour before from  
> kpathsea (not
> using xetex), so I had a root around there after rerunning the  
> installation
> scripts, and checked the fmt files.  The xelatex had been installed
> correctly, but the symlink was not created at any point (yes, I  
> checked
> $PATH).  I tried manually creating one (in ~/bin), and it worked  
> straight
> away!  I do not think this was ever a step mentioned in the  
> documentation,
> but then again, tetex on Debian does seem to act strangely sometimes.

The "install-xetex" script finishes up with a call to "texlinks",  
which is supposed to do this... but I don't know whether/how that  
works in the Debian setup.

>
> Is tex live a more modern and 'recommended' tex distribution (and  
> worth
> switching to), or should things work equally well with tetex?

For now, it may not matter much. But teTeX is no longer being  
maintained, whereas TeX Live is, so it would probably be wise to move  
to TL at some point. The new TeX Live 2007 release is in the final  
stages of testing right now, though, so there's no point in doing  
anything immediate; at least wait for this release to be finalized,  
and perhaps also for the Debian TeX packagers to update.

(TL2007 will include xetex as a standard part of the distribution,  
incidentally, so no additional installation will be needed.)

JK