[XeTeX] LaTeX features in XeTeX

[Nicholas Wilson]

Hello,

I have installed xetex from source (for Debian etch) and all the opentype font 
features seem to work.  The system is nice, but I can't use it on all my 
latex documents, since it complains that \documentclass, \chapter, and so on 
are not properly defined macros.  I have seen references to "XeLaTeX" and the 
xetex website says it will work on latex documents, but I don't see how to 
get it to go from 'extended opentype TeX mode' to 'extended opentype LaTeX 
mode'.  There is no manpage, so there may be some option I need to use, or 
some macro I missed in the documetation.

The xetex linux page seems to imply that there are two binaries: 
"The downloads available here will provide the xetex and xelatex    
command-line tools. After installing these, you may wish to configure Kile, 
Emacs, or another working environment to run these tools as an alternative to 
standard TeX/LaTeX."
However, I only ended up with one binary when I compiled (/usr/bin/xetex) and 
I checked in the precompiled packages (which had not worked) and found that 
they also had just the one programme.

The documentation  (once I found it—assuming I did) on the whole was 
surprisingly good by the way, given the doom and gloom pronouncements on the 
website.  The XeTeX reference and the fontspec guide were helpful, but the 
sample files were not incredibly useful, since they have no examples of the 
sort of 'normal' latex document I am trying to compile.

So is xelatex another mode of xetex, or another programme I am missing?

Thanks for all the help and the good programme (XeTeX).

Nicholas