[tex-k] A few TeX live questions (xdvipdfmx, xetex, & Co)

[Peter Breitenlohner]

On Tue, 3 Mar 2009, Jonathan Kew wrote:

> One approach would be to let the dvipdfmx repository be the canonical 
> upstream, and the xetex project would just maintain a collection of patches 
> that are applied in order to build xdvipdfmx. Just like using WEB change 
> files rather than editing the main source. It's a pretty tedious way to write 
> code, though, once it gets beyond a few small, isolated changes.

Hi Jonathan,

that would be a nice idea because it would prevent these projects from
diverging to much, or one lacking improvements applied to the other one. 
Unfortunately it is probably quite unrealistic, given past experience with
etex, pdftex, and pdfetex.

The only realistic way to do such a thing might be to have the differing
pieces surrounded by suitable "#ifdef"s, and even that may be painful.

Regards,
Peter