Monday, September 8, 2003 Bill McClain wrote:

> On Mon, 8 Sep 2003 16:43:26 +0200
> Giuseppe Bilotta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>> I'd like to inform you on the current status and short-term
>> forecast for e-Omega.

> Could you give some brief comments for we (me, I mean) who haven't been
> following Omega progress? Please point to web documents if such exist:

> * If I'm a pdftex/Context user, what does it take become an
> Aleph/Context user?

For casual stuff, dump the format with

texexec -tex=eomega --make en

and then compile with

texexec -tex=eomega filename

For "permanent" use of e-Omega/Aleph as ConTeXt engine change
the appropriate lines in texexec.ini.

> * Are there special considerations for "fonts in Aleph"? It's a entirely
> new setup, isn't it?

No, you can keep using your old stuff.

> * Could you compare and contrast the quality and capabilities of
> dvipdfmx with pdf generation in pdftex?

I'll leave this to Hans, since I have not used dvipdfmx myself
(MiKTeX does not yet carry it).

> * If my work is entirely in English, is there any benfit of Aleph for
> me?

Uh ... not really, unless you need it for some very special
stuff.

The only "general" advancement in Omega (and thus Aleph) which
is of "general" interest is the presence of more than 15 math
families, which can greatly reduce the programmer's onus in
supporting multiple symbol sets. This is not something for the
general user, though, unless some low-level programming for
this takes place first. (Hi there, Hans! ;>)

Omega features like multidirectional typesetting or OCPs might
turn useful for special purposes. For example, there is a book
by Martin Gardner where some text is typeset mirrored; with
some work, you can achieve this by exploiting the TeX/MetaPost
link provided by ConTeXt; or you can do it with Omega. Another
example, at one time I needed a way to code the text (think for
example of ROT13): even though the coding is easy and could be
implemented with a preprocessor or something, OCPs allow to do
it "internally". But, as I said, these are very special
requirements. Normal day-to-day left-to-right text does not
need any of the advanced features in Omega,

-- 
Giuseppe "Oblomov" Bilotta

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