[XeTeX] XeTeX and MiKTeX

[Joel C. Salomon]

On 8/1/07, Apostolos Syropoulos <asyropoulos at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >Has anyone on the lists had success blending MiKTeX with XeTeX?
> I am not using Windows, but I assume that the average MiKTeX user is using
> WinEdt (http://www.winedt.com/) and so he/she wants to be able to use XeTeX
> from within WinEdt

Not at all; I have a MiKTeX installation that I don't want to corrupt,
and I want also to try XeTeX.

> First or all, I used the TeXLive binaries.
<snip>
> In the first folder I copied all files one finds in the XeTeX
> svn repository (http://scripts.sil.org/svn-view/xetex/TRUNK/texmf/tex/xelatex/)
> and in the second I copied the the contents of the corresponding folder of the
> MikTeX installation. Then I rehashed the system by entering the following
> command in a command shell/term:
>
> \progra~1\texlive\bin\win32\mktexlsr
>
> Next I manually created the format file
<snip>
> by entering a command like the following one:
>
> cd \progra~1\texlive\texmf\web2c
> \progra~1\texlive\bin\win32\xetex -ini -etex -jobname=xelatex latex.ltx
<snip discussion of editors>
> This worked perfectly for my friend and he is now a happy XeTeX user!

This gives me some hope that the following scheme might work:

• Extract the files in the W32XeTeX archive to a local texmf tree
(possibly its own) and add the bin directory to the system path,
• Somehow convince MiKTeX to generate, and when necessary regenerate,
the format files.

Can anyone provide some guidance with step 2?

--Joel