[XeTeX] Running xelatex on the examples in XeTeX_doc.zip

[Ravi Parimi]

On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 1:42 PM, Fr. Michael
Gilmary<FrMichaelGilmary at maronitemonks.org> wrote:
> Ken Brown wrote:
>
>
>> I think what Peter Dyballa was trying to say is that you should be running
>> xetex, not xelatex.
>
>
> No --- the files found in: ==>>
> /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-dist/doc/generic/velthuis
>
> are named "xetex-examples.tex" and "xetex-misspaal.tex", but they are
> xelatex documents: each source begins with:
>
>
>> % Requires font Gargi_1.7 which is often installed in Linux
>> % see http://salrc.uchicago.edu/resources/fonts/available/hindi/
>> % for Hindi, Marathi and Nepali fonts
>> \documentclass[11pt]{article}
>> \usepackage{ifxetex}
>> \RequireXeTeX
>> \usepackage{fontspec}
>> \setmainfont[Script=Devanagari,Mapping=velthuis]{Gargi_1.7}
>
> <etc.>
>
> and
>
>> % Requires font Nakula by John Smith,
>> % see http://bombay.indology.info/software/fonts/devanagari/index.html
>> \documentclass[12pt]{article}
>> \usepackage{ifxetex}
>> \RequireXeTeX
>> \usepackage{fontspec}
>> \newcommand\dn{\catcode`\~=12
>>           \fontspec[Script=Devanagari,Mapping=velthuis-sanskrit]{Nakula}}
>
>
> I think that the command \documentclass requires XeLaTeX and won't work on
> plain XeTeX.
>
> Each requires special fonts, too, and I think that's the principal
> difficulty for Ravi.
>
> If not ... just say so!
>
> HTH.

Michael,

Yes, that helps a lot. I'm wasn't sure if I should be using xelatex or
xetex to process the .tex files under Samples/ (extracted from
XeTeX_doc.zip). Can I assume the xetex command to be equivalent to the
latex command, and xelatex equivalent to pdflatex? The difference I'm
seeing here is that the format/syntax of files fed to these commands
is different, whereas this isn't true while dealing with latex.

thanks again!