[tex-live] bringing xetex to texlive

[Karl Berry]

Hi Jonathan,

    I'd like to work towards getting the XeTeX project (derivative of e- 
    TeX with Unicode and OpenType support) integrated into TeX Live

Very exciting!  Thanks.

Now that xetex is multiplatform, I wonder if, in the fullness of time,
the xetex extensions can be integrated with the pdftex extensions
(present and future).  I doubt it's the easiest thing technically, but
it seems there may be some overlap in functionality.

    on a year-old snapshot of sources from TL), 

I don't think you'll find much has changed.

    there are of course a few changes to shared files in web2c/lib, etc.,  

FYI, the original source for web2c remains on Olaf's private machines.
It's fine to check in changes to TL, Olaf checks back and forth, but it
would be good to communicate changes in the shared files on
tex-k at tug.org, maybe even before checking them in.

    The latter may eventually be merged back into the main dvipdfmx
    project

I hope so.  There are too many dvi-to-pdf variants already.  The
dvipdfmx maintainers have been pretty responsive.

    Looking forward to hearing from you -- thanks!

Thank you, Jonathan.  I haven't written much about the TL build
structure, although there are terse hints scattered about in various
README files.  Let me/us know when questions ...

Happy hacking,
Karl