[XeTeX] FreeSerif not working for me in Devanagari

[mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca]

On Fri, 7 Sep 2012, Zdenek Wagner wrote:
> requires newer version of fontspec. I am not able to compile the
> latest fontspec and replace it in my Linux version. Thus the only
> solution was to use the system Deja Vu fonts that produce different
> line breaks and different page breaks. Of course, for some fonts it
> would work.

The same kind of problem can occur any time a document requires a new
version of a package and you try to compile it on a system with an older
version.  I don't think that has much to do with font pathname
specification, which I thought was the question.  My claim was only that
relative pathnames are useful and allow documents to be portable when they
include their necessary fonts.  Including the font with the document is
the only real way to be sure that it can compile identically on a foreign
system.  If the document also depends on something else the recipient
doesn't have, or if the recipient's system cannot process the font that
the document requires, then I think it should be clear that using a
relative pathname isn't going to magically solve the unrelated issues.

This kind of thing - the idea that all documents should be compilable
everywhere - is exactly why the TeX/LaTeX world have their Byzantine
path-searching system, licenses that forbid modification unless you also
change the filenames, and default "we dare not EVER fix any bugs because
we don't want to break documents that depend on them" attitude.  XeTeX
seems not to be following that tradition, and the fact of using
system-installed fonts which might not be consistent from one system to
the next is just part of it.  We can debate how important the "absolute
portability" requirement is, but I doubt that XeTeX's approach is going to
change soon.

-- 
Matthew Skala
mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca                 People before principles.
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/