[XeTeX] Using Xetex on GNU/linux.

[Chris Jones]

I have been using xetex for a few months as part of the asciidoc/a2x
tool chain. The tool chain invokes dblatex to generate pdf's from xml
Docbook. Per its files, dblatex uses xetex as its 'backend driver'.

This gives very good results, especially with multi-byte content in a
UTF-8 encoding.

I noticed that there was a 'xetex' command on this GNU/linux system,
that invokes an ELF executable located in /usr/bin/.

I tried the following against some latex documents that compile without
errors when I use the 'latex' command:

| $ xetex sample.tex

As far as I can tell some TeX markup is not recognized, but after
hitting a few <Enter> in succession, a valid sample.pdf is generated,
containing a mix of the original text interspersed with my unrecognized
TeX markup.

Is there a quick start document anywhere that might help me get this to
work in a GNU/linux context, or am I altogether barking the wrong tree?

Thanks,

CJ