Re: [XeTeX] TECkit map for Latin alphabet to Unicode IPA

[Andy Lin]

On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 04:06, Daniel Greenhoe  wrote:
> What I would really like is a "drop in" solution involving a TECkit
> map only. That is, I would like to be able to hand such a map off to a
> linguist, and to tell him/her to simply add in something like this to
> his/her tex file:
>   \addfontfeatures{Mapping=tipa2uni}.
> And that's it --- just one support file: a TECkit map file.

This is actually the reason I abandoned developing the map file
further. I had started based on the textipa replacements that I knew,
and then I discovered all the additional commands and realized that
they could not be implemented by TECkit along (don't get me wrong,
TECkit maps are very powerful, I've written one to convert
arabtex-like romanization into Persian). After tipa support was added
to xunicode, I just used that instead.

If this "single line" solution is important to you, you could write a
wrapper package that calls xunicode, adding whichever redefinitions
you need.

-Andy



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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Norbert Preining]

On Fr, 28 Okt 2011, Zdenek Wagner wrote:
> I cannot test other Indic scripts because I do not know them. Tibetan
> script may be difficult.

Tibetan is much simpler than Devanagari scripts. It has a certain amount
of fixed ligatures, plus a fw rules if one wants to make non-standard
ligatures (practically only used for transcribing Sanskrit texts). I wrote
long time ago otp/ocp for omega to do the stuff. That can easilybe
proted to luatex.

WRT xetex, I don't know much about good otf fonts for Tibetan, but
there are for sure some.

Best wishes

Norbert

Norbert Preiningpreining@{jaist.ac.jp, logic.at, debian.org}
JAIST, Japan TeX Live & Debian Developer
DSA: 0x09C5B094   fp: 14DF 2E6C 0307 BE6D AD76  A9C0 D2BF 4AA3 09C5 B094

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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Philip TAYLOR (Webmaster, Ret'd)]

Zdenek Wagner wrote:


If I understand Mojca correctly, she compared XeTeX to Omega.


If that were the case, Zdenek, would Mojca not have written
"XeTeX is exactly the contrary. It simplifies everything
in comparison to Omega.", rather than "XeTeX is exactly
the contrary. It simplifies everything in comparison to pdfTeX."
which is what she actually wrote ?


Well, I I want to typeset a text in Hindi using XeLaTeX, I just type a
text in UTF-8, switch the font (using the fontspec package) by
\fontspec[Script=Devanagari]{fontname} and it works. If I do the same
in lualatex, it does not work, I would have to plug somewhere a lot of
lua code in order to specify how to handle the Devanagari script. The
fontspec package just handles loading the font, not correct rendering
of the text.


I think I'm losing the plot, Zdenek !  At first you said

> If I understand Mojca correctly, she compared XeTeX to Omega.

but now you are comparing Xe[La]TeX to lua[La]TeX, so I'm
a little confused as to how you are interpreting Mojcs's
words.

** Phil.


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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Zdenek Wagner]

2011/10/28 Philip TAYLOR (Webmaster, Ret'd) :
>
>
> Zdenek Wagner wrote :
>
>> 2011/10/28 Philip TAYLOR (Webmaster, Ret'd) :
>
>>> Mojca Miklavec wrote :
>
 Omega was remove because it was buggy, unmaintained, but most
 important of all: hardly usable. It took a genius to figure out how to
 use it, while XeTeX is exactly the contrary. It simplifies everything
 in comparison to pdfTeX.
>>>
>>> I think that last remark is grossly unfair, although probably
>>> not intentionally so.  XeTeX adds functionality that was non-
>>> existent in PdfTeX, but that hardly makes it simpler.  It
>>> also introduces a non-TeXlike syntax, particularly (perhaps
>>> only) in the extended \font primitive that could (IMHO)
>>> have been better thought out, particularly in the overloading
>>> of string quotes and the introduction of square brackets.
>>>
>> If I understand Mojca correctly, she compared XeTeX to Omega.
>
> If that were the case, Zdenek, would Mojca not have written
> "XeTeX is exactly the contrary. It simplifies everything
> in comparison to Omega.", rather than "XeTeX is exactly
> the contrary. It simplifies everything in comparison to pdfTeX."
> which is what she actually wrote ?
>
Well, I I want to typeset a text in Hindi using XeLaTeX, I just type a
text in UTF-8, switch the font (using the fontspec package) by
\fontspec[Script=Devanagari]{fontname} and it works. If I do the same
in lualatex, it does not work, I would have to plug somewhere a lot of
lua code in order to specify how to handle the Devanagari script. The
fontspec package just handles loading the font, not correct rendering
of the text.

> ** Phil.
>



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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Philip TAYLOR (Webmaster, Ret'd)]

Zdenek Wagner wrote :


2011/10/28 Philip TAYLOR (Webmaster, Ret'd) :



Mojca Miklavec wrote :



Omega was remove because it was buggy, unmaintained, but most
important of all: hardly usable. It took a genius to figure out how to
use it, while XeTeX is exactly the contrary. It simplifies everything
in comparison to pdfTeX.


I think that last remark is grossly unfair, although probably
not intentionally so.  XeTeX adds functionality that was non-
existent in PdfTeX, but that hardly makes it simpler.  It
also introduces a non-TeXlike syntax, particularly (perhaps
only) in the extended \font primitive that could (IMHO)
have been better thought out, particularly in the overloading
of string quotes and the introduction of square brackets.


If I understand Mojca correctly, she compared XeTeX to Omega.


If that were the case, Zdenek, would Mojca not have written
"XeTeX is exactly the contrary. It simplifies everything
in comparison to Omega.", rather than "XeTeX is exactly
the contrary. It simplifies everything in comparison to pdfTeX."
which is what she actually wrote ?

** Phil.


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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Zdenek Wagner]

2011/10/28 Philip TAYLOR (Webmaster, Ret'd) :
>
>
> Mojca Miklavec wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 13:19, Vafa Khalighi wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi
>>> Since Jonathan has no time any more for coding XeTeX, then what will be
>>> the
>>> state of XeTeX in TeX distributions such as TeXLive? will be XeTeX
>>> removed
>>> from TeXLive just like Aleph and Omega (in favour of LuaTeX) were removed
>>> from TeXLive?
>>
>> Omega was remove because it was buggy, unmaintained, but most
>> important of all: hardly usable. It took a genius to figure out how to
>> use it, while XeTeX is exactly the contrary. It simplifies everything
>> in comparison to pdfTeX.
>
> I think that last remark is grossly unfair, although probably
> not intentionally so.  XeTeX adds functionality that was non-
> existent in PdfTeX, but that hardly makes it simpler.  It
> also introduces a non-TeXlike syntax, particularly (perhaps
> only) in the extended \font primitive that could (IMHO)
> have been better thought out, particularly in the overloading
> of string quotes and the introduction of square brackets.
>
If I understand Mojca correctly, she compared XeTeX to Omega. Look
what was needed to typeset a Devanagari text in Omega. It was
necessary to plug a few OTP's. Some users somehow managed to do it but
it required non-TeX files. In XeTeX you have to define that the font
is in the Devanagari script and the rest is just TeX.

> Philip Taylor
>
>
>
>
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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Future state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Zdenek Wagner]

2011/10/28 maxwell :
> On Fri, 28 Oct 2011, William Adams wrote:
>> majority of documents are created using GUI tools.   What use cases
>> are better served by batch mode, and in what cases is TeX used by
>> default because of available GUI tools refuse to play.
>
> We have a process that starts with DocBook (XML) and gets converted to
> XeLaTeX using the dblatex program.  We have what I consider to be very good
> reasons for this approach (I suppose some on this list might disagree),
> including interacting with other XML-based processes, automatic tagging of
> words for script, extracting various kinds of data (grammar rules to be
> converted into parsers, examples to be converted into test cases for those
> parsers, etc.).  So yes, we use batch mode.
>
> I don't know how many other users of dblatex there are, but there seem to
> be enough to justify its existence--we didn't create it, we were just lucky
> to find it.  (And also fortunate to need xelatex just as it had matured.)
>
Occasionally I need strictly formatted documents with a limited set of
elements. For this purpose I define the structure in Relax NG and
write an XSLT stylesheet for transformation to (Xe)LaTeX. I am just
working on such a book that will be written in XML and typeset with
XeLaTeX.

>   Mike Maxwell
>
>
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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Petr Tomasek]

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 02:03:52PM +0200, Khaled Hosny wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 01:58:18PM +0200, Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> > If nothing else, if nobody adapts the code, it might stop working with
> > next version of Mac OS X or a version after that.
> 
> I assume this is related to native Mac font APIs, right? But then I
> think the worst case with to disable that losing AAT font support, but
> OpenType fonts would still work using ICU (which I believe is also used
> on Mac).
> 
> Regards,
>  Khaled

What is the status of the harfbuzz-ng backend support in XeTeX?

-- 
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Jabber: but...@jabbim.cz


EA 355:001  DU DU DU DU
EA 355:002  TU TU TU TU
EA 355:003  NU NU NU NU NU NU NU
EA 355:004  NA NA NA NA NA





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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Jonathan Kew]

On 28 Oct 2011, at 21:20, Philip TAYLOR (Webmaster, Ret'd) wrote:
>> 
>> Omega was remove because it was buggy, unmaintained, but most
>> important of all: hardly usable. It took a genius to figure out how to
>> use it, while XeTeX is exactly the contrary. It simplifies everything
>> in comparison to pdfTeX.
> 
> I think that last remark is grossly unfair, although probably
> not intentionally so.  XeTeX adds functionality that was non-
> existent in PdfTeX, but that hardly makes it simpler.

I know I'm supposed to only respond very occasionally to email these days, but 
I can't resist adding a comment here. :)

IM(NS)HO there is some truth to both sides of this. I believe xetex does make a 
couple of things _much_ simpler: specifically, the use of a variety of fonts 
that are not provided by the TeX distribution of your choice, or a TeX-oriented 
vendor; and working with Unicode, and in particular with non-Latin scripts 
having complex rendering requirements. While these things could in theory also 
be done with Omega, achieving them was beyond the ability of all but a very 
select few experts.

On the other hand, the underlying document formatting language and process is 
still TeX, with all its trickiness and complexity (and power); xetex certainly 
doesn't make that any simpler.

>  It
> also introduces a non-TeXlike syntax, particularly (perhaps
> only) in the extended \font primitive that could (IMHO)
> have been better thought out, particularly in the overloading
> of string quotes and the introduction of square brackets.

Yes, I wish now that this had been done differently, not by gradual extension 
of the old \font primitive but as a properly-designed new feature, but it kinda 
"just growed" in response to various needs... it's less than ideal, I agree.

JK




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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Philip TAYLOR (Webmaster, Ret'd)]

Mojca Miklavec wrote:

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 13:19, Vafa Khalighi wrote:

Hi
Since Jonathan has no time any more for coding XeTeX, then what will be the
state of XeTeX in TeX distributions such as TeXLive? will be XeTeX removed
from TeXLive just like Aleph and Omega (in favour of LuaTeX) were removed
from TeXLive?


Omega was remove because it was buggy, unmaintained, but most
important of all: hardly usable. It took a genius to figure out how to
use it, while XeTeX is exactly the contrary. It simplifies everything
in comparison to pdfTeX.


I think that last remark is grossly unfair, although probably
not intentionally so.  XeTeX adds functionality that was non-
existent in PdfTeX, but that hardly makes it simpler.  It
also introduces a non-TeXlike syntax, particularly (perhaps
only) in the extended \font primitive that could (IMHO)
have been better thought out, particularly in the overloading
of string quotes and the introduction of square brackets.

Philip Taylor




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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Future state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[maxwell]

On Fri, 28 Oct 2011, William Adams wrote:
> majority of documents are created using GUI tools.   What use cases
> are better served by batch mode, and in what cases is TeX used by
> default because of available GUI tools refuse to play.

We have a process that starts with DocBook (XML) and gets converted to
XeLaTeX using the dblatex program.  We have what I consider to be very good
reasons for this approach (I suppose some on this list might disagree),
including interacting with other XML-based processes, automatic tagging of
words for script, extracting various kinds of data (grammar rules to be
converted into parsers, examples to be converted into test cases for those
parsers, etc.).  So yes, we use batch mode.

I don't know how many other users of dblatex there are, but there seem to
be enough to justify its existence--we didn't create it, we were just lucky
to find it.  (And also fortunate to need xelatex just as it had matured.)

   Mike Maxwell


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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Future state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Zdenek Wagner]

2011/10/28  :
> On Fri, 28 Oct 2011, William Adams wrote:
>> > majority of documents are created using GUI tools.   What use cases
>> > are better served by batch mode, and in what cases is TeX used by
>> > default because of available GUI tools refuse to play.
>>
>> Large database publications. Variable data printing.
>
> Also, anything where documents end up checked into the source control
> and configuration management systems used for software development.  It's
> really nice to be able to compile my TeX documents along with my code.  I
> can't do that with GUI tools.

Documents being written by several people in cooperation in real time
(usually living in a versioning system)

Documents that have to be rendered from sources on several different platforms

Documents that have to be rendered from sources years later

Documents containing math

Documents created on-the-fly by a web service

(Just for comparison: a few years ago it was my job to produce a
printed book from database data where authors did not distinguish
hyphens from dashes and put chemical formulas as H2SO4 on a line, not
as H$_2$SO$_4$ because they do not know tex, do not have indexes on a
keyboard and wrote it in the web form. I prepared an auxilliary file
with replacements inside TeX macros and typesetting 80 pages book took
me just 2 hours, including hand-tuning the page breaks. Now it is done
by another man using InDesign, it takes him 4 weeks and he does not
correct any of these errors.)
> --
> Matthew Skala
> msk...@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca                 People before principles.
> http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/
>
>
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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Zdenek Wagner]

2011/10/28 Khaled Hosny :
> I think it would not be hard to convince Hans to write the code once he
> is given a clear specification (but that would require familiarity with
> OpenType and how it handles Indic shaping as well) and someone who can
> do the testing.
>
The rules are coded in ICU and Pango and described in the Unicode
standard with enough examples for Devanagari. Simply stated, the "I"
matra U+03F must precede a consonant group (consonats connected with
virama U+094D) after which it appears. Consonant + virama + ra
(U+0930) does not follow normal rule for conjuncts but a special repha
sign is used. Ra + virama + consonant group + optional matra should be
rendered so that the Ra is displayed as the hook-like symbol at the
write edge of the syllable. If the syllable ends with anusvara
(U+0902), the anusvara is printed inside the RA hook.
The consonant may contain both a matra below (short u = U+0941, long u
= U+0942) and an anusvara (U+0902) or candrabindu (U+0901) above. They
should be vertically aligned but it is not in nowadays luatex. There
may be other rules, I will have to think more. I have enough Hindi
texts to test whether Devanagari works. I cannot help with other Indic
scripts.

And there is also normalization problem. For instance, ZA (U+0958) can
be alternatively coded as JA (U+091C) followed by a nukta (U+093C).
Some fonts do not have ZA so that it must be combined, some fonts
contain ZA and do not contain nukta so that ZA must not be combined,
some fonts contain both. XeTeX as default does not perfprm any
normalization but both methods ZA <---> JA + nukta can be switched on.
There are other characters that can be represented by another
character with nukta appended.

> Regards,
>  Khaled
>



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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Future state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[mskala]

On Fri, 28 Oct 2011, William Adams wrote:
> > majority of documents are created using GUI tools.   What use cases
> > are better served by batch mode, and in what cases is TeX used by
> > default because of available GUI tools refuse to play.
>
> Large database publications. Variable data printing.

Also, anything where documents end up checked into the source control
and configuration management systems used for software development.  It's
really nice to be able to compile my TeX documents along with my code.  I
can't do that with GUI tools.
-- 
Matthew Skala
msk...@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca People before principles.
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/


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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Future state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[William Adams]

On Oct 28, 2011, at 12:54 PM, George N. White III wrote:

> 0.  Why is Tex still necessary?   My impression is that Knuth hoped to
> see his work used in more creative ways than TeX distros.

Well, that's why LuaTeX is being developed, and the thought behind the 
development of ANT (though I haven't had much luck getting more recent versions 
of the latter compiled).

> 1.  Knuth wanted to create beautiful books, yet many distinctly
> unbeautiful books are still being published.   Lack of support for
> font design size, too similar fonts used for text and maths (e.g.,
> same glyph for letter "a" and variable "a") contribute to lack of
> beauty.   I'm reminded of Knuth's early paper in which he analyzed
> bugs in discarded decks of punched cards and found many examples of
> errors resulting from failure to apply well-known principles taught in
> into courses.

Sturgeon's law.

> 2.  Knuth created his own fonts and tools and these are still part of
> a TeX system.   What problems are still present in the fonts and
> support provided by modern GUI environments?

I'd really like to see a super-font-family developed which encompasses _every_ 
possible axis and design option in NFSS.

In GUI environments, selecting optical sizes is a pain, as is selecting 
character variations.

> 3.  Knuth was concerned with maths.   There are now many groups that
> use TeX for documents that do not involved maths.  What do the
> descendants of TeX have that other general purpose tools lack?

Free licensing and easy operation from a simple text file and efficiency.

> 4.  Knuth was concerned primarily with typeset material.   Since then
> there have been developments in linearization/flattened maths for
> communications, and math markup for web (html) documents.

It would be neat to see a TeX variant which would make a .ePub, adding special 
characters (such as zero-width-non-joiners and discretionary hyphens) to 
improve rendering.

> 5.   Knuth built a compiler that is used in batch mode, but the
> majority of documents are created using GUI tools.   What use cases
> are better served by batch mode, and in what cases is TeX used by
> default because of available GUI tools refuse to play.

Large database publications. Variable data printing.

William


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senior graphic designer
Fry Communications
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.




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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Khaled Hosny]

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 07:37:00PM +0200, Zdenek Wagner wrote:
> 2011/10/28 Khaled Hosny :
> > On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 05:57:20PM +0200, Zdenek Wagner wrote:
> > I don't know much about Indic scripts, all I know is that we have no
> > special code for Indic shaping, so if things work then it works because
> > it relies on generic OpenType features that require no special handling
> > from the engine.
> >
> Sorry for the noise, I was not careful enough to look and forgot that
> I see the XeLaTeX result, not lualatex. The rendering is not correct
> and when I tried a real Hindi text (a few poems) it looks really
> terribly. I know the rules for Devanagari but do not know where to
> plug them in. My knowledge of luatex is almost zero, I have just
> passed Taco's lua tutorial last year on CM at Brejlov. Lua as a
> language will not be difficult for me (I already know Algol, PL/I, C,
> C++, Perl, PHP, Pascal, Java, Tcl), I just have to learn lua's TeX
> interface.

I think it would not be hard to convince Hans to write the code once he
is given a clear specification (but that would require familiarity with
OpenType and how it handles Indic shaping as well) and someone who can
do the testing.

Regards,
 Khaled


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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Zdenek Wagner]

2011/10/28 Khaled Hosny :
> On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 05:57:20PM +0200, Zdenek Wagner wrote:
> I don't know much about Indic scripts, all I know is that we have no
> special code for Indic shaping, so if things work then it works because
> it relies on generic OpenType features that require no special handling
> from the engine.
>
Sorry for the noise, I was not careful enough to look and forgot that
I see the XeLaTeX result, not lualatex. The rendering is not correct
and when I tried a real Hindi text (a few poems) it looks really
terribly. I know the rules for Devanagari but do not know where to
plug them in. My knowledge of luatex is almost zero, I have just
passed Taco's lua tutorial last year on CM at Brejlov. Lua as a
language will not be difficult for me (I already know Algol, PL/I, C,
C++, Perl, PHP, Pascal, Java, Tcl), I just have to learn lua's TeX
interface.

> Regards,
>  Khaled
>



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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Future state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[George N. White III]

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 11:00 AM, William Adams  wrote:
> On Oct 28, 2011, at 9:00 AM, Dominik Wujastyk wrote:
>
>> Personally, I would not mind if XeTeX went into maintenance mode.  I like 
>> such stability.  It already has a great deal of functionality, probably 
>> enough to last me the rest of my writing career.  I do take Vafa's point, 
>> though, that if future OS platforms break XeTeX, it would be nice to have 
>> someone fix things up.
>
> Here in the U.S., it's almost time for United Way payroll deduction 
> contributions to be allocated --- I've been donating to TUG for a couple of 
> years, but would be willing to direct my TUG contribution to XeTeX 
> maintenance if others would be similarly inclined.
>

Money can help, but unless very big piles of it are available, it is
more critical to generate a passion for good typography in people who
have the techical abilities needed for the work. I conjecture that the
number of people with both the passion and abilities needed is
currently empty.  Clearly there are many current xetex users with the
interest, and commercial software developers employ people to write
code to render texts using the MS and Apple API's, so there are also
people with the abilities.  Some may not be able to  contribute to
xetex by the terms of their employment, and some whose passion lies
with their employers products would not have considered contributing
to xetex.

Knuth has made many outstanding contributions, but not the least is to
raise typography to the first rank of problems in computing.   If you
want to create a pool of people with a passion for computer
typography, effort needs to go towards expanding awareness of Knuth's
work in typography and issues that remain.

To get things started, here is my list:

0.  Why is Tex still necessary?   My impression is that Knuth hoped to
see his work used in more creative ways than TeX distros.

1.  Knuth wanted to create beautiful books, yet many distinctly
unbeautiful books are still being published.   Lack of support for
font design size, too similar fonts used for text and maths (e.g.,
same glyph for letter "a" and variable "a") contribute to lack of
beauty.   I'm reminded of Knuth's early paper in which he analyzed
bugs in discarded decks of punched cards and found many examples of
errors resulting from failure to apply well-known principles taught in
into courses.

2.  Knuth created his own fonts and tools and these are still part of
a TeX system.   What problems are still present in the fonts and
support provided by modern GUI environments?

3.  Knuth was concerned with maths.   There are now many groups that
use TeX for documents that do not involved maths.  What do the
descendants of TeX have that other general purpose tools lack?

4.  Knuth was concerned primarily with typeset material.   Since then
there have been developments in linearization/flattened maths for
communications, and math markup for web (html) documents.

5.   Knuth built a compiler that is used in batch mode, but the
majority of documents are created using GUI tools.   What use cases
are better served by batch mode, and in what cases is TeX used by
default because of available GUI tools refuse to play.

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Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia



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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Khaled Hosny]

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 05:57:20PM +0200, Zdenek Wagner wrote:
> 2011/10/28 Khaled Hosny :
> > On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 02:50:53PM +0200, Zdenek Wagner wrote:
> >> Generally, all XeTeX documents must render in luatex without the need
> >> of modifying the source. I see that things are changing. Simple नमस्ते
> >> दुनिया fails in luatex from TL 2010 but works in TL 2011. We cannot
> >> switch from XeTeX to luatex today but it may be possible in the
> >> future.
> >
> > I by works you mean you are getting some output, then this is true,
> > otherwise I don't think you will get correct Indic rendering with the
> > current OpenType "engine" used by luatex packages.
> >
> In Devanagari, there are two important features: creation of conjuncts
> (correct even in luatex of TL 2010) and moving short "I" matra in
> front of the consonant (correct in lualatex of TL 2011 but not TL
> 2010, I can send you the PDF's for comparison, if you like). I have
> not done any test with mor complex text (I will try some of my files).
> I cannot test other Indic scripts because I do not know them. Tibetan
> script may be difficult.

I don't know much about Indic scripts, all I know is that we have no
special code for Indic shaping, so if things work then it works because
it relies on generic OpenType features that require no special handling
from the engine.

Regards,
 Khaled


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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Zdenek Wagner]

2011/10/28 Khaled Hosny :
> On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 02:50:53PM +0200, Zdenek Wagner wrote:
>> Generally, all XeTeX documents must render in luatex without the need
>> of modifying the source. I see that things are changing. Simple नमस्ते
>> दुनिया fails in luatex from TL 2010 but works in TL 2011. We cannot
>> switch from XeTeX to luatex today but it may be possible in the
>> future.
>
> I by works you mean you are getting some output, then this is true,
> otherwise I don't think you will get correct Indic rendering with the
> current OpenType "engine" used by luatex packages.
>
In Devanagari, there are two important features: creation of conjuncts
(correct even in luatex of TL 2010) and moving short "I" matra in
front of the consonant (correct in lualatex of TL 2011 but not TL
2010, I can send you the PDF's for comparison, if you like). I have
not done any test with mor complex text (I will try some of my files).
I cannot test other Indic scripts because I do not know them. Tibetan
script may be difficult.

> Regards,
>  Khaled
>



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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Tobias Schoel]

As a simple user (very simple: none of my work gets published, I just 
use TeX for myself): What do I have to think about, when moving from 
XeLaTeX to LuaLaTeX?


I took a random document I created last week and tried to compile it 
with lualatex instead of xelatex. It threw an error because of 
polyglossia. OK, I commented out polyglossia. It compiled without error 
but hyphenation was broken (the text was German). I added 
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel} [would be great error in xetex as I read 
often on this list] and the document compiled without errors and with 
good hyphenation.


So was it luck or  should this be standard?

bye

Toscho

Am 28.10.2011 16:33, schrieb Vafa Khalighi:

As an example, the attached PDF is just a portion of a maths textbook
with the title "Theory of Ordinary Differential Equation and Dynamic
Systems" which has been typeset using XePersian andit is published
just today in Iran.

http://www.mehrnews.com/fa/newsdetail.aspx?NewsID=1440752





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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 28.10.2011 um 13:58 schrieb Mojca Miklavec:

> If nothing else, if nobody adapts
> the code, it might stop working with next version of Mac OS X or a
> version after that.

Mac OS X is not the world. Classic Mac OS was the basis for the first XeTeX 
development. When Apple decides to change its APIs so often and not to support 
older APIs longer than two or three years, then Apple customers will have to 
use some other (office or such) software or stick to their functioning Mac OS X 
version. What is so bad when an OS works?

--
Greetings

  Pete

One cannot live by television, video games, top ten CDs, and dumb movies alone.
– Amiri Baraka, 1999




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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Robin Fairbairns]

Vafa Khalighi  wrote:

> As an example, the attached PDF is just a portion of a maths textbook with
> the title "Theory of Ordinary Differential Equation and Dynamic Systems"
> which has been typeset using XePersian and it is  published just today
> in Iran.
> [1]http://www.mehrnews.com/fa/newsdetail.aspx?NewsID=1440752
>[...]

impressive.

*some day*, we may get to the point where luatex can be used as a
replacement for anything xetex currently does: at *that* point, one
might consider migrating things so that we only need the one engine with
continued support.

until that day, we *must* hold on to xetex.

robin


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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Khaled Hosny]

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 02:50:53PM +0200, Zdenek Wagner wrote:
> Generally, all XeTeX documents must render in luatex without the need
> of modifying the source. I see that things are changing. Simple नमस्ते
> दुनिया fails in luatex from TL 2010 but works in TL 2011. We cannot
> switch from XeTeX to luatex today but it may be possible in the
> future.

I by works you mean you are getting some output, then this is true,
otherwise I don't think you will get correct Indic rendering with the
current OpenType "engine" used by luatex packages.

Regards,
 Khaled


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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Alan Munn]

On Oct 28, 2011, at 10:27 AM, Kirk Lowery wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 8:50 AM, Zdenek Wagner  
> wrote:
> 
> Generally, all XeTeX documents must render in luatex without the need
> of modifying the source. I see that things are changing. Simple नमस्ते
> दुनिया fails in luatex from TL 2010 but works in TL 2011. We cannot
> switch from XeTeX to luatex today but it may be possible in the
> future.
> 
> Is there a feature comparison between LuaTeX and XeTeX out there somewhere? 
> In other words, when do we know when LuaTeX is ready for XeTeX users?

As I understand it, many of the important XeLaTeX packages (e.g. Polyglossia 
and xeCJK, and probably others) make extensive use of XeTeXinterchartoks 
mechanism. LuaLaTeX has no direct equivalent to this, and so porting these 
packages to LuaTeX will require significant work.

For a proof of concept solution that Taco posted see 


However in the comments it is mentioned that there may be problems with this 
solution and that LuaTeX has more powerful ways of doing the same thing, but I 
don't think anyone has done it to date.

The issues that drove the development of XeLaTeX (language support) are not the 
same issues that drive the development of LuaTeX, and so although there is a 
lot of overlap in what they each can do, LuaTeX doesn't address the needs of 
many XeLaTeX users at the moment.

Alan

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am...@gmx.com







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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Kirk Lowery]

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 8:50 AM, Zdenek Wagner wrote:

>
> Generally, all XeTeX documents must render in luatex without the need
> of modifying the source. I see that things are changing. Simple नमस्ते
> दुनिया fails in luatex from TL 2010 but works in TL 2011. We cannot
> switch from XeTeX to luatex today but it may be possible in the
> future.


Is there a feature comparison between LuaTeX and XeTeX out there somewhere?
In other words, when do we know when LuaTeX is ready for XeTeX users?

Kirk
--
$DO || ! $DO ; try
try: command not found


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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Future state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[William Adams]

On Oct 28, 2011, at 9:00 AM, Dominik Wujastyk wrote:

> Personally, I would not mind if XeTeX went into maintenance mode.  I like 
> such stability.  It already has a great deal of functionality, probably 
> enough to last me the rest of my writing career.  I do take Vafa's point, 
> though, that if future OS platforms break XeTeX, it would be nice to have 
> someone fix things up.

Here in the U.S., it's almost time for United Way payroll deduction 
contributions to be allocated --- I've been donating to TUG for a couple of 
years, but would be willing to direct my TUG contribution to XeTeX maintenance 
if others would be similarly inclined.

William

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senior graphic designer
Fry Communications
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.




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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Khaled Hosny]

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 01:58:18PM +0200, Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> If nothing else, if nobody adapts the code, it might stop working with
> next version of Mac OS X or a version after that.

I assume this is related to native Mac font APIs, right? But then I
think the worst case with to disable that losing AAT font support, but
OpenType fonts would still work using ICU (which I believe is also used
on Mac).

Regards,
 Khaled


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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Dominik Wujastyk]

Personally, I would not mind if XeTeX went into maintenance mode.  I like
such stability.  It already has a great deal of functionality, probably
enough to last me the rest of my writing career.  I do take Vafa's point,
though, that if future OS platforms break XeTeX, it would be nice to have
someone fix things up.

Dominik



On 28 October 2011 14:54, Vafa Khalighi  wrote:

> My question in the first place had nothing to do with the development of
> XeTeX. In fact it is a long time that there has been no development for
> XeTeX and I have no problem with that.  What scares me is that XeTeX may be
> unusable in say several years.
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 11:49 PM, Vafa Khalighi  wrote:
>
>> That is not entirely true. Should the users of TeX (those who use Knuth's
>> original TeX engine) support the development of Knuth TeX or move to another
>> engine just because Knuth no longer extends TeX and he only fixes bugs?
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 11:33 PM, George N. White III 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 8:58 AM, Mojca Miklavec
>>>  wrote:
>>>
>>> > On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 13:19, Vafa Khalighi wrote:
>>> >> Hi
>>> >> Since Jonathan has no time any more for coding XeTeX, then what will
>>> be the
>>> >> state of XeTeX in TeX distributions such as TeXLive? will be XeTeX
>>> removed
>>> >> from TeXLive just like Aleph and Omega (in favour of LuaTeX) were
>>> removed
>>> >> from TeXLive?
>>> >
>>> > Omega was remove because it was buggy, unmaintained, but most
>>> > important of all: hardly usable. It took a genius to figure out how to
>>> > use it, while XeTeX is exactly the contrary. It simplifies everything
>>> > in comparison to pdfTeX. Omega was low quality and Aleph was
>>> > deprecated also because LuaTeX now contains all functionality that was
>>> > worth keeping.
>>> >
>>> > There is no reason to remove XeTeX yet (unless it gets merged with
>>> > LuaTeX one day, but that won't happen yet), but it is true that a
>>> > maintainer is desperately needed. If nothing else, if nobody adapts
>>> > the code, it might stop working with next version of Mac OS X or a
>>> > version after that.
>>>
>>> If I have an old house that meets my needs but has substandard
>>> plumbing and wiring, I may be in desperate need of a contractor
>>> who can bring it up to current standards, or I can tear it down and
>>> build a new house.  Both options are expensive, but renovation
>>> involves greater uncertainties requires more skills than does new
>>> construction, so unless there are other considerations (house is a
>>> historical landmark), new construction is often better than renovation.
>>>
>>> Clearly XeTeX fills a need, but that doesn't mean it deserves ongoing
>>> development.   The groups that rely on XeTeX have to either find a way
>>> to support development or switch to a new engine, which at present is
>>> LuaTeX.   There has already been discussion of what would be needed
>>> to make the changes in XeTeX, maybe there needs to be discussion
>>> (in LuaTeX forums) of the barriers to adoption faced by the groups who
>>> currently rely on XeTeX.
>>>
>>> --
>>> George N. White III 
>>> Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
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>


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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Vafa Khalighi]

My question in the first place had nothing to do with the development of
XeTeX. In fact it is a long time that there has been no development for
XeTeX and I have no problem with that.  What scares me is that XeTeX may be
unusable in say several years.

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 11:49 PM, Vafa Khalighi  wrote:

> That is not entirely true. Should the users of TeX (those who use Knuth's
> original TeX engine) support the development of Knuth TeX or move to another
> engine just because Knuth no longer extends TeX and he only fixes bugs?
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 11:33 PM, George N. White III wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 8:58 AM, Mojca Miklavec
>>  wrote:
>>
>> > On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 13:19, Vafa Khalighi wrote:
>> >> Hi
>> >> Since Jonathan has no time any more for coding XeTeX, then what will be
>> the
>> >> state of XeTeX in TeX distributions such as TeXLive? will be XeTeX
>> removed
>> >> from TeXLive just like Aleph and Omega (in favour of LuaTeX) were
>> removed
>> >> from TeXLive?
>> >
>> > Omega was remove because it was buggy, unmaintained, but most
>> > important of all: hardly usable. It took a genius to figure out how to
>> > use it, while XeTeX is exactly the contrary. It simplifies everything
>> > in comparison to pdfTeX. Omega was low quality and Aleph was
>> > deprecated also because LuaTeX now contains all functionality that was
>> > worth keeping.
>> >
>> > There is no reason to remove XeTeX yet (unless it gets merged with
>> > LuaTeX one day, but that won't happen yet), but it is true that a
>> > maintainer is desperately needed. If nothing else, if nobody adapts
>> > the code, it might stop working with next version of Mac OS X or a
>> > version after that.
>>
>> If I have an old house that meets my needs but has substandard
>> plumbing and wiring, I may be in desperate need of a contractor
>> who can bring it up to current standards, or I can tear it down and
>> build a new house.  Both options are expensive, but renovation
>> involves greater uncertainties requires more skills than does new
>> construction, so unless there are other considerations (house is a
>> historical landmark), new construction is often better than renovation.
>>
>> Clearly XeTeX fills a need, but that doesn't mean it deserves ongoing
>> development.   The groups that rely on XeTeX have to either find a way
>> to support development or switch to a new engine, which at present is
>> LuaTeX.   There has already been discussion of what would be needed
>> to make the changes in XeTeX, maybe there needs to be discussion
>> (in LuaTeX forums) of the barriers to adoption faced by the groups who
>> currently rely on XeTeX.
>>
>> --
>> George N. White III 
>> Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia
>>
>
>


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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Zdenek Wagner]

2011/10/28 George N. White III :
> On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 8:58 AM, Mojca Miklavec
>  wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 13:19, Vafa Khalighi wrote:
>>> Hi
>>> Since Jonathan has no time any more for coding XeTeX, then what will be the
>>> state of XeTeX in TeX distributions such as TeXLive? will be XeTeX removed
>>> from TeXLive just like Aleph and Omega (in favour of LuaTeX) were removed
>>> from TeXLive?
>>
>> Omega was remove because it was buggy, unmaintained, but most
>> important of all: hardly usable. It took a genius to figure out how to
>> use it, while XeTeX is exactly the contrary. It simplifies everything
>> in comparison to pdfTeX. Omega was low quality and Aleph was
>> deprecated also because LuaTeX now contains all functionality that was
>> worth keeping.
>>
>> There is no reason to remove XeTeX yet (unless it gets merged with
>> LuaTeX one day, but that won't happen yet), but it is true that a
>> maintainer is desperately needed. If nothing else, if nobody adapts
>> the code, it might stop working with next version of Mac OS X or a
>> version after that.
>
> If I have an old house that meets my needs but has substandard
> plumbing and wiring, I may be in desperate need of a contractor
> who can bring it up to current standards, or I can tear it down and
> build a new house.  Both options are expensive, but renovation
> involves greater uncertainties requires more skills than does new
> construction, so unless there are other considerations (house is a
> historical landmark), new construction is often better than renovation.
>
> Clearly XeTeX fills a need, but that doesn't mean it deserves ongoing
> development.   The groups that rely on XeTeX have to either find a way
> to support development or switch to a new engine, which at present is
> LuaTeX.   There has already been discussion of what would be needed
> to make the changes in XeTeX, maybe there needs to be discussion
> (in LuaTeX forums) of the barriers to adoption faced by the groups who
> currently rely on XeTeX.
>
Generally, all XeTeX documents must render in luatex without the need
of modifying the source. I see that things are changing. Simple नमस्ते
दुनिया fails in luatex from TL 2010 but works in TL 2011. We cannot
switch from XeTeX to luatex today but it may be possible in the
future.
> --
> George N. White III 
> Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia
>



-- 
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http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz



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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Vafa Khalighi]

That is not entirely true. Should the users of TeX (those who use Knuth's
original TeX engine) support the development of Knuth TeX or move to another
engine just because Knuth no longer extends TeX and he only fixes bugs?

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 11:33 PM, George N. White III wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 8:58 AM, Mojca Miklavec
>  wrote:
>
> > On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 13:19, Vafa Khalighi wrote:
> >> Hi
> >> Since Jonathan has no time any more for coding XeTeX, then what will be
> the
> >> state of XeTeX in TeX distributions such as TeXLive? will be XeTeX
> removed
> >> from TeXLive just like Aleph and Omega (in favour of LuaTeX) were
> removed
> >> from TeXLive?
> >
> > Omega was remove because it was buggy, unmaintained, but most
> > important of all: hardly usable. It took a genius to figure out how to
> > use it, while XeTeX is exactly the contrary. It simplifies everything
> > in comparison to pdfTeX. Omega was low quality and Aleph was
> > deprecated also because LuaTeX now contains all functionality that was
> > worth keeping.
> >
> > There is no reason to remove XeTeX yet (unless it gets merged with
> > LuaTeX one day, but that won't happen yet), but it is true that a
> > maintainer is desperately needed. If nothing else, if nobody adapts
> > the code, it might stop working with next version of Mac OS X or a
> > version after that.
>
> If I have an old house that meets my needs but has substandard
> plumbing and wiring, I may be in desperate need of a contractor
> who can bring it up to current standards, or I can tear it down and
> build a new house.  Both options are expensive, but renovation
> involves greater uncertainties requires more skills than does new
> construction, so unless there are other considerations (house is a
> historical landmark), new construction is often better than renovation.
>
> Clearly XeTeX fills a need, but that doesn't mean it deserves ongoing
> development.   The groups that rely on XeTeX have to either find a way
> to support development or switch to a new engine, which at present is
> LuaTeX.   There has already been discussion of what would be needed
> to make the changes in XeTeX, maybe there needs to be discussion
> (in LuaTeX forums) of the barriers to adoption faced by the groups who
> currently rely on XeTeX.
>
> --
> George N. White III 
> Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia
>


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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[George N. White III]

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 8:58 AM, Mojca Miklavec
 wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 13:19, Vafa Khalighi wrote:
>> Hi
>> Since Jonathan has no time any more for coding XeTeX, then what will be the
>> state of XeTeX in TeX distributions such as TeXLive? will be XeTeX removed
>> from TeXLive just like Aleph and Omega (in favour of LuaTeX) were removed
>> from TeXLive?
>
> Omega was remove because it was buggy, unmaintained, but most
> important of all: hardly usable. It took a genius to figure out how to
> use it, while XeTeX is exactly the contrary. It simplifies everything
> in comparison to pdfTeX. Omega was low quality and Aleph was
> deprecated also because LuaTeX now contains all functionality that was
> worth keeping.
>
> There is no reason to remove XeTeX yet (unless it gets merged with
> LuaTeX one day, but that won't happen yet), but it is true that a
> maintainer is desperately needed. If nothing else, if nobody adapts
> the code, it might stop working with next version of Mac OS X or a
> version after that.

If I have an old house that meets my needs but has substandard
plumbing and wiring, I may be in desperate need of a contractor
who can bring it up to current standards, or I can tear it down and
build a new house.  Both options are expensive, but renovation
involves greater uncertainties requires more skills than does new
construction, so unless there are other considerations (house is a
historical landmark), new construction is often better than renovation.

Clearly XeTeX fills a need, but that doesn't mean it deserves ongoing
development.   The groups that rely on XeTeX have to either find a way
to support development or switch to a new engine, which at present is
LuaTeX.   There has already been discussion of what would be needed
to make the changes in XeTeX, maybe there needs to be discussion
(in LuaTeX forums) of the barriers to adoption faced by the groups who
currently rely on XeTeX.

-- 
George N. White III 
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia


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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Mojca Miklavec]

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 13:19, Vafa Khalighi wrote:
> Hi
> Since Jonathan has no time any more for coding XeTeX, then what will be the
> state of XeTeX in TeX distributions such as TeXLive? will be XeTeX removed
> from TeXLive just like Aleph and Omega (in favour of LuaTeX) were removed
> from TeXLive?

Omega was remove because it was buggy, unmaintained, but most
important of all: hardly usable. It took a genius to figure out how to
use it, while XeTeX is exactly the contrary. It simplifies everything
in comparison to pdfTeX. Omega was low quality and Aleph was
deprecated also because LuaTeX now contains all functionality that was
worth keeping.

There is no reason to remove XeTeX yet (unless it gets merged with
LuaTeX one day, but that won't happen yet), but it is true that a
maintainer is desperately needed. If nothing else, if nobody adapts
the code, it might stop working with next version of Mac OS X or a
version after that.

Mojca


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Re: [XeTeX] [tex-live] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Zdenek Wagner]

2011/10/28 Vafa Khalighi :
> Hi
> Since Jonathan has no time any more for coding XeTeX, then what will be the
> state of XeTeX in TeX distributions such as TeXLive? will be XeTeX removed
> from TeXLive just like Aleph and Omega (in favour of LuaTeX) were removed
> from TeXLive?
> Currently we have a large number of Persian TeX users and they need XeTeX
> and if XeTeX gets removed from TeX distribution, then it would create lots
> of problems for our community. Currently I am working on porting my works to
> luatex but that at least takes few years to become stable enough.

I do not know any precise number but it seems to me there are a lot of
XeTeX users in India. Moreover, the Prague Bulletin of Mathematical
Linguistics is typeset by XeLaTeX. Thus I hope XeTeX will not be
removed within a decade.

> Thanks



-- 
Zdeněk Wagner
http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz



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[XeTeX] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Vafa Khalighi]

Hi

Since Jonathan has no time any more for coding XeTeX, then what will be the
state of XeTeX in TeX distributions such as TeXLive? will be XeTeX removed
from TeXLive just like Aleph and Omega (in favour of LuaTeX) were removed
from TeXLive?

Currently we have a large number of Persian TeX users and they need XeTeX
and if XeTeX gets removed from TeX distribution, then it would create lots
of problems for our community. Currently I am working on porting my works to
luatex but that at least takes few years to become stable enough.

Thanks


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