[XeTeX] Can't find `xetex.fmt'

[Jonathan Kew]

On 27 Oct 2005, at 4:04 am, Laurie Field wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I just installed XeTeX v0.98 using i-Installer, never having used it
> before, and I get this message when trying to typeset (in TeXShop):
>
> This is XeTeXk, Version 3.141592-2.2-0.98 (Web2C 7.5.3)
>  %&-line parsing enabled.
> kpathsea: Running mktexfmt xetex.fmt
> fmtutil: format `xetex' not available.
> I can't find the format file `xetex.fmt'!
>
> I realise this has perhaps been addressed before in different forms on
> the list but I couldn't ascertain what the accepted solution was. Help
> would be appreciated.

xetex.fmt (and xelatex.fmt) should have been created and installed by  
the i-Installer installation process. This apparently failed (and  
then when xetex tries to create the .fmt file on the fly, it fails  
again).

My guess is that the reason will turn out to be that you have files  
in your personal ~/Library/texmf area (i.e., within your "Home"  
directory) that are confusing the process. Depending on the history  
of recent TeX i-Package versions you have installed, there may be  
remnants of a "personal configuration", in particular a file ~/ 
Library/texmf/web2c/fmtutil.cnf that will cause a failure like this.

If you do have such a file, you should remove it (and anything else  
in that directory, probably), unless you really understand what it is  
for and are sure you want to keep it. Then you can re-run the i- 
Installer configuration step, and it should create xetex.fmt in the  
proper place.

And if it still fails, look in the "Subprocess Output" from the  
configuration process (see the View menu in i-Installer); there may  
be error messages that give a clue as to what is going wrong. Or  
alternatively, if you're comfortable with Terminal, you can try:

     sudo fmtutil-sys --byfmt xetex

and see what happens; this will also fail (I assume), but the  
Terminal output may help pinpoint the problem.

Hope this helps,

JK