[tex-live] TeXLive2007: Bug in (Xe)TeX for 64bit and big endianess

[Frank Küster]

Hans Hagen <pragma at wxs.nl> wrote:

> Frank � wrote:
>> So we're left with fixing the bugs, but that is, unfortunately, *not*
>> just a question of taking the xpdf patch, applying it to the sources and
>> recompiling the packages.  That would be relatively easy and per se not
>> a reason for a switch to poppler.  The real problem is that in almost
>> all cases, the published patch does not apply because the copies of xpdf
>> in pdftex, pdftohtml, cups, forgotwhat all have slightly different
>> versions.  Plus we need to support our stable distribution, which meant
>> patching xpdf 1.x, 2.x and 3.x at some point in Debian (with sometimes
>> two or more different values for each x).
>>   
> since pdftex is rather monolithic, updating a statically bound pdftex
> is also an option; xpdf bugs are fixed in the repos and so pdftex has
> the fixes; since tex users need to update pdftex regularly anyway
> (because of other fixes) this no big burden on the user.

You mean we should have dropped xpdf 3.01p3 into woody's
teTeX-1.0whatever source directory and compile?  Although I guess that
would have worked, it's against the spirit of Debian Policy, and I
wouldn't want to have to justify it in public.

>> This is totally unrelated, because patches to the xpdf sources in Debian
>> have exactly zero effect on pdftex, no matter whether it uses its own
>> xpdf copy or libpoppler.
>>   
> hm, but isn't pdftex using its own patched copy of xpdf then? after
> all, it's supposed to be in the pdftex source tree

Yes, but these are *totally* different source packages. The patches that
Hamish applies to his xpdf source package are not related to the TeX
packages, not even communicated to the TeX maintainers.

Regards, Frank
-- 
Dr. Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)