[XeTeX] How to manually create the xelatex.fmt?

Ulrike Fischer news3 at nililand.de
Wed Oct 19 09:53:48 CEST 2011


Am Tue, 18 Oct 2011 07:39:06 -0700 schrieb Chris Travers:

>> So the limit is five years (but only for the latex kernel).
>> The version date of my (current) latex.ltx ist
>> \edef\fmtversion{2011/06/27}

>>> Or is XeTeX not intended to be used in these environments?

>> I would say that if your latex is more than five years old, your
>> xetex binaries and packages aren't up-to-date either. And as xetex
>> is rather young this can be quite a problem. Regardless if you want
>> to ship out only xetex documents or xetex documents + binaries: You
>> should be aware that other people can have up-to-date systems and so
>> you should make tests on such systems too (and just in case you
>> don't know:  you can't use a fmt generated by one xetex version with
>> another xetex version).

> Of course.  I don't expect .fmt files to be portable.  What is helpful
> is to know how to resolve the issue so I can put a faq entry in and
> direct people to it when they ask on the mailing list.  (And if they
> can't get it, charge for support.)  I believe I have gotten that, so I
> am satisfied with the resolution.
> 
> However, so that there are no misunderstandings....   The issue here
> is being forced to choose between supporting XeTeX on many platforms
> and being able to support the platform's package manager.  I don't see
> anyone here suggesting a way around that.  For developers distributing
> software, that's kind of an issue.

The problem is that there seems to a mounting number on Linux users
which are reluctant to install software without using there package
manager. And there seems to be a mounting number of  maintainers of
linux distros (there just was a quite heated discussion in d.c.t.t.)
which enforce this reluctance by telling people that they set their
system at risk if they install e.g. a new TeXLive without using the
disto package manager. 

On the other side the linux distros seems to be either unwilling or
unable to update the packages they support. Your list is quite
impressing in this respect:

 
> Debian Lenny:  TexLive 2007
> Debian Squeeze:  TexLive 2009
> Debian Sid:  TexLive 2009
> Ubuntu 10.04 LTS:  TexLive 2009
> Red Hat Enterprise 6:  TexLive 2007
> That means that the most recent versions of CentOS and Scientific
> Linux also use 2007.

This is all (partly horribly) outdated. The current TeXLive version
is 2011 and they are currently working on 2012. 

As the maintainer of the KOMA-packages pointed out this makes
support rather difficult: He constantly gets reports about bugs
which have been resolved years ago. 

What would you think of a linux distro which would force you to use
a virus protection software with signature files five years old? 

 

> However, the software project has contributors on both TexLive 2007
> and 2009, and so our coverage in terms of testing is pretty good
> there.

2009 is outdated. As you could see from the answers here quite a lot
people did install texlive 2011. 


-- 
Ulrike Fischer 



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