[XeTeX] Experiences with XeTeX on Debian Sarge and Ubuntu Edgy Eft

[Jonathan Kew]

Thanks for the notes. Some comments below:

On 24 Oct 2006, at 10:28 am, Christoph Bier wrote:

> Hello,
>
> because the Ubuntu debs of the XeTeX homepage have unmet
> dependencies on Debian Sarge I downloaded the XeTeX und xdvipdfmx
> sources for building my own debs (BTW: I had to make configure and
> debian/rules executable).

Yes, the executable bit gets lost when ViewVC creates the tarball. : 
(  Some day I'd like to get this fixed.

> After removing hungarian and serbian
> hyphenation patterns all formats have been built successfully. But
> compiling a document fails because of an undefined control sequence
> (\do) in url.sty. I found out that the XeTeX package provides its
> own, older url.sty (ver 3.1)

This was because url.sty contains (or contained) 8-bit characters  
that cause it to fail when read as UTF-8 by xetex. So the version in  
the xetex package has the 8-bit chars replaced by ^^xx sequences.  
I've reported this issue to the author, but haven't checked the  
status recently. If nothing else, we should update xetex's copy to a  
Unicode-safe copy of the latest url.sty.

> that is not used here by xelatex
> because the newer one is found first ($TEXMFHOME is searched before
> $TEXMFLOCAL). For some reason I can't remember I need the new
> url.sty (ver 3.2). But even if I copy XeTeX's url.sty in the
> directory with the document to compile (Will Robertson's XeTeX
> reference guide (v0.2)) I get another undefined control sequence
> (this is still true if I copy all .sty and .tex files provided by
> XeTeX in this directory):
>
> ! Undefined control sequence.
> \Gm at checkdrivers ...fined \else \ifnum \pdfoutput
>                                                   =\@ne
> \Gm at setdriver {pdfte...
> l.71 \begin{document}

I think this means that you're missing one or more of the .cfg files  
(for packages like geometry.sty or crop.sty) that are included with  
xetex. For some packages that don't yet "know" about xetex, we try to  
persuade them to use their pdftex drivers via a .cfg file.

> Installation of the Ubuntu debs (I'm aware that they are for Dapper)
> fails for Edgy with the following message:
>
> texhash: Updating /home/chris/texmf/ls-R...
> texhash: Updating /usr/local/share/texmf/ls-R...
> texhash: Updating /var/lib/texmf/ls-R-TEXMFMAIN...
> texhash: Updating /var/lib/texmf/ls-R-TEXMFDIST-TETEX...
> texhash: Updating /var/cache/fonts/ls-R...
> texhash: Updating /var/lib/texmf/ls-R...
> texhash: Done.
> [: 76: ==: unexpected operator
> /var/lib/dpkg/info/xetex.postinst: 76: -p:: not found
> /var/lib/dpkg/info/xetex.postinst: 76: -p:: not found
> /var/lib/dpkg/info/xetex.postinst: 76: -p:: not found
> /var/lib/dpkg/info/xetex.postinst: 76: -p:: not found
>
> (BTW: Edgy ships with TeXLive debs besides the teTeX debs. Will
> dependencies of XeTeX be adapted for TeXLive users? IMHO it makes
> sense because Thomas Esser doesn't make new releases of teTeX any  
> more.)

Yes, that would make sense.

Better still, we're aiming for xetex to be included in TeX Live 2006,  
so that separate "add-on" packaging will no longer be needed.

>
> I built my own debs again (now on Ubuntu Edgy) but with the same
> results (same message as above).

I don't have an Edgy machine yet, and won't have an opportunity to  
try this any time soon, but could it be because /bin/sh is no longer  
bash but dash? You could try changing the #! line in the postinst  
script to explicitly call for /bin/bash, in case there are bash-isms  
in there.

JK