[Pkg-texlive-maint] Re: RFP: xetex - An extension of TeX with Unicode and OpenType support

[Ralf Stubner]

On Tue, May 02, 2006 at 09:21 +0200, Frank Küster wrote:
> Hi Daniel,
> 
> Daniel Glassey <wdg at debian.org> wrote:
> 
> > So upstream will need help to clean it up before submitting. Anyone from
> > the Debian TeX or TeXLive projects that would like to help please head
> > over to the xetex mailing list at http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex
> 
> I'd really like to see XeTeX in Debian, it's exciting!  But I fear we
> are busy enough with getting TeXlive in good shape, clarifying license
> issues, and ideally also a new splitting scheme for teTeX, and I guess
> nobody will have much time to package XeTeX.  Unless maybe someone
> fond of fonts (Ralf?) uses it himself.

XeTeX is definitly exciting. I find it exciting enough that some weeks
ago I downloaded and compiled the allready available svn version. I was
even able to build the plain format. I didn't get much further without a
working xdvipdfmx, though. I haven't tried the meanwhile available
packages for breezy.

I think I have heard somewhere that there are plans to include XeTeX in
TeX Live. Norbert, do you know anything about this? That would really
help with respect to the build system, which is rather nonstandard right
now. Also, there are some interesting questions concerning the proper
placement of XeTeX specific files in the TEXMF tree.

Integration in the TeX infrastructure in Debian doesn't look to
difficult. Of course, one should to use dynamic libraries for
libkpathsea and libicu. That should be possible with a proper build
system. 

BTW, is the license ok for Debian?

cheerio
ralf