Re: kpathsea in xdvipdfmx source files

Am Fri, 5 Aug 2011 07:28:12 +0800 schrieb Daniel Greenhoe:

> I am trying to compile the source files for xdvipdfmx, but am having
> problems with references to labels containing kpse_....
> Are these references to kpathsea?
> 
> If so, can someone help me better understand this? From what I
> understand, kpathsea is to help with path searching. Why is it's
> presence required in xdvipdfmx? I would think that xdvipdfmx should be
> a straight forward utility that converts from one device independent
> format (xdv) to another (pdf). Why would it need any help from
> non-ANSI-C library functions?

xdv/dvi->pdf is by no way a "straight" and simple conversion. An xdv
doesn't contain all the needed ressources but only references
("links"). It's like making a pdf from a html file. To be able to
build a self-contained format like pdf from it xdvipdfmx must be
able to find quite a lot things which can be stored in the texmf
trees (and so are found with kpathsea): the configuration file,
.map-files, fonts referenced in the xdv/dvi  (.vf, .pfb, otf, ttf
...) and pictures. 

Run xdvipdfmx -vv to see all the ressources it searches and uses.

> I want to compile a bare-bones version of xdvipdfmx for a win32
> environment for the purpose of debugging xdvipdfmx, because xdvipdfmx
> doesn't work properly on my system when using pstricks with XeLaTeX.


Why don't you try TeXLive first? You can install it beside miktex,
you only need to change the PATH variable to switch between the
systems. 

-- 
Ulrike Fischer 


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