[XeTeX] XeTeX and libpng

[Bruno Voisin]

Le 18 août 08 à 13:17, Johannes Engel a écrit :

> building XeTeX from svn I have got a question: Why does XeTeX carry  
> its
> own libpng instead on relying on the installed version of the  
> respective
> build system? Are there special adaptions necessary?

One reason: on the Mac it's been for a long time practically  
impossible to build xdvipdfmx, due to the version of libpng shipped  
with OS X being in an incompatible format (dynamic .dylib instead of  
static IIRC). For some time specifying explicitly the libpng-related  
dirs using --with-pnglib-libdir and --with-pnglib-include when running  
configure worked, but one or two years ago it stopped working.

People had to resort to wider-ranging porting architectures such as  
MacPorts or Fink, a step many Mac users are not ready to take because  
that means installing a lot of system overrides.

Also, another problem the the main TeX distribution for the Mac  
(MacTeX) did not install the kpathsea libraries.

Hence, Jonathan Kew decided finally to include all the relevant  
libraries with the XeTeX sources and link statically against them.

All this, of course, subject to confirmation by Jonathan. These are  
just my recollections of how things happened, viewed from the Mac side.

Bruno Voisin