On 14 Feb 2006, at 12:46, Adam Lindsay wrote:

> [I feel like a lot of the stuff I've done in this space has been
> released into a vacuum, and that few people are actually making stuff
> with OpenType and/or XeConTeXt.]


Dear Adam,

You helped me get XeConTeXt up and running and I have been quietly  
using it and have great pleasure in doing so. Thank you very much  
again. I suppose it is, as is the case with a lot of areas, that  you  
don't hear from people until they have a problem. Which brings me to  
this. I have lost my settings for XeConTeXt during upgrades of TeX/ 
ConTeXt and have recovered by using the information on the  
ConTeXtwiki but recently this does not seem to work anymore (or  
perhaps I have done something stupid). I noticed new advice in a  
recent e-mail:
> On Feb 12, 2006, at 8:49 PM, Steffen Wolfrum wrote:
>
>
>> This is XeTeX, Version 3.141592-2.2-0.99b (Web2C 7.5.3)
>> (WARNING: translate-file "natural.tcx" ignored)
>> ---! /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/web2c/cont-en.fmt was
>> written by pdfetex
>>
>                                                 ^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> That's the problem. If you want both xetex and pdftex, you need to
> have two different format-files, both called cont-en.fmt. They need
> to be in two different subdirectories:
> /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/web2c/pdfetex [for pdfetex]
> /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/web2c/xetex   [for xetex]
>
> Remove the cont-*.fmt files in the .../web2c directory and regenerate
> the formats with texexec.
>

but trying this has not worked for me either. In an e-mail Jonathan  
Kew suggested he might look into creating an installation script for  
XeTeX and I encouraged him to do so. In the meantime do you know if  
the procedure for getting XeConTeX up and running has changed and if  
so what should I do. I have an iMac G5 10.4.4 and the latest TeX  
using Gerben's installer.

There is at least this voice in the vacuum ready to bother you.

Thanks,
Charlie