[XeTeX] No Non-English Hyphenation

[Sebastian Kosch]

On Saturday 08 August 2009 06:43:25 pm Ulrike Fischer wrote:
> You log-file shows that the xelatex format doesn't contain the
> german patterns. The output of fmtutil you mentioned above doesn't
> shows the generation of the xelatex format (but it shows that the
> xetex format gets the german patterns). In miktex there is a GUI to
> include/exclude formats, probably something similar exist in tex
> live and you have exclude the xelatex format and are now using an
> old version. Try to build the xelatex format explicitly. If still
> fails send the log-file of the format generation.

Thanks for your quick reply :-) ... I've tried ...

 $ fmtutil --enablefmt xelatex
 fmtutil: initial config file is `/usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-
 var/web2c/fmtutil.cnf'
 fmtutil: configuration file unchanged.

... and ...

 $ fmtutil --enablefmt xetex
 fmtutil: initial config file is `/usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-
 var/web2c/fmtutil.cnf'
 fmtutil: configuration file unchanged.

... where fmtutil.cnf is a file that doesn't contain any lines for the 
xe(la)tex engines, only latex, luatex, pdftex, etex etc.
Thus, calling "fmtutil --byfmt xetex" (or xelatex) doesn't produce anything.
After much googling, I have appended the lines

 xetex  xetex language.def -etex xetex.ini
 xelatex  xelatex language.def -etex xelatex.ini

... which cause fmtutil to invoke xe(la)tex with the -ini argument, creating 
new fmt files. (Note, though, that these lines may be total BS here. I'm just 
trying stuff.)
This is the output of "fmtutil --byfmt xetex": http://pastebin.com/m506ee79
This is the output of "fmtutil --byfmt xelatex": http://pastebin.com/m621dc774
But even though fmtutil seems to be dumping acceptable fmt files, nothing 
changes. I actually wonder which fmt file xelatex uses at all; kpsewhich 
doesn't find the new ones in /web2c, so ...

any further ideas?