Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Paul Isambert]

Philip TAYLOR  a écrit:
> 
> 
> Paul Isambert wrote:
> 
> > Ulrike Fischer  a écrit:
> 
> >> Sorry, but can you imagine that a typesetting engine can thrive
> >> which must say on its webpage "I'm a wonderful tex engine based on
> >> unicode but if you want to use open type fonts you will have to
> >> write or adapt a lot of complicated code first".?
> >
> > Honestly, yes :)  That's what TeX is to me anyway: a wonderful system that 
> > requires a lot
> > of hard work.
> 
> Yes, hard work at the macro/list-processing/expansion/execution level;
> but it (or rather, a 21-century derivative of "it", where "it" = "TeX")
> should not require hard work in order to interface properly with the
> font-handling aspects of the operating system on which it is installed.

The whole point of LuaTeX is to go a few levels deeper into TeX's
entrails; that includes fonts and nodes (``interfac[ing] properly with
the font-handling aspects of the operating system'' doesn't mean much:
loading a font is trivial; processing it in nodes is another matter
entirely).

>   XeTeX has demonstrated that this is not necessary, and that
> the engine itself can successfully be extended to handle those aspects
> (not, perhaps, in quite as elegant way as might be hoped, but infinitely
> better than not handling it at all).

If LuaTeX worked like XeTeX in that respect, it wouldn't be LuaTeX, it
would be XeTeX. Sorry to make such trivial statements, but what XeTeX
has demonstrated holds for XeTeX only.

> Now, it is perfectly reasonable to argue that LuaTeX has a different
> philosophy to XeTeX, and that there are things that can and should be
> done in Lua rather than in the core binary : few if any would differ
> with that.  But surely it is not unreasonable to ask the LuaTeX authors
> and maintainers to provide the interface to the font system (whether in
> core binary or in Lua would be entirely at their discretion) and to
> make that interface format agnostic.

That's, again and again, luaotfload, with all its imperfections.

Best,
Paul



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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Khaled Hosny]

On Wed, Aug 08, 2012 at 05:38:49PM +0200, Ulrike Fischer wrote:
> That's not my point. I know that font loaders exists. We have 
> luaotfload which can be used with latex + plain tex. There is the 
> font loader code of context. There is the generic font loader code 
> somewhere deep in the context tree. I have tried to use all of them: 
> All of them are different. None is really documentated, none is 
> format independant and none is written in a way which allows people 
> to add extensions or improvements. 

And which of these qualities is covered by XeTeX equivalent i.e. if
LuaTeX went XeTeX route what would have changed her (apart from the loss
of choice)?

Regards,
 Khaled


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Philip TAYLOR]

Paul Isambert wrote:


Ulrike Fischer  a écrit:



Sorry, but can you imagine that a typesetting engine can thrive
which must say on its webpage "I'm a wonderful tex engine based on
unicode but if you want to use open type fonts you will have to
write or adapt a lot of complicated code first".?


Honestly, yes :)  That's what TeX is to me anyway: a wonderful system that 
requires a lot
of hard work.


Yes, hard work at the macro/list-processing/expansion/execution level;
but it (or rather, a 21-century derivative of "it", where "it" = "TeX")
should not require hard work in order to interface properly with the
font-handling aspects of the operating system on which it is installed. 
 XeTeX has demonstrated that this is not necessary, and that

the engine itself can successfully be extended to handle those aspects
(not, perhaps, in quite as elegant way as might be hoped, but infinitely
better than not handling it at all).

Now, it is perfectly reasonable to argue that LuaTeX has a different
philosophy to XeTeX, and that there are things that can and should be
done in Lua rather than in the core binary : few if any would differ
with that.  But surely it is not unreasonable to ask the LuaTeX authors
and maintainers to provide the interface to the font system (whether in
core binary or in Lua would be entirely at their discretion) and to
make that interface format agnostic.

Philip Taylor


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Paul Isambert]

Martin Schröder  a écrit:
> 
> 2012/8/8 Ulrike Fischer :
> > Two years ago I would have said this too. But now I doubt it.
> > Opentype fonts are much more complicated that some expandafters or
> > the latex output routine. Also - more importantly - I see none of
> > the needed discussion going on.
> 
> That discussion is not helped by discussing *LuaTeX* issues
> on a *XeTeX* mailing list.

Right. I apologize for my launching that discussion here.

> OTOH the upcoming EuroTeX conference will be an excellent
> place for that discussion.

I give power of attorney to whatever stubborn LuaTeX fanatics will be
there; and there'll be plenty, since EuroTeX is coupled with the ConTeXt
meeting :)

Paul



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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Wed, 8 Aug 2012 17:09:26 +0200 schrieb Zdenek Wagner:


>> I don't ask that a font loader should be included in the binary. A
>> lua package which you can use in the font callback is fine. It is
>> also okay if you need to adapt a configuration file before use e.g.
>> to get it working with your texsystem or your os. The main point is
>> that a working, default open type font loader should exist at all.
>>
> That's why most users do not compile TeX from sources and do not pick
> files from CTAN but use TeX distributions. Such system dependent
> modifications are already done there.

That's not my point. I know that font loaders exists. We have 
luaotfload which can be used with latex + plain tex. There is the 
font loader code of context. There is the generic font loader code 
somewhere deep in the context tree. I have tried to use all of them: 
All of them are different. None is really documentated, none is 
format independant and none is written in a way which allows people 
to add extensions or improvements. 

> On the contrary I have tried several times to read the Indic
> OpenType specification but I still understand nothing. Adding
> full OpenType + AAT + Graphite support to luaotfload will not be
> an easy task.

It will be imho impossible without a sound starting point and real 
contact to the developer of luatex.  


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http://www.troubleshooting-tex.de/



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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Paul Isambert]

Ulrike Fischer  a écrit:
> 
> Am Wed, 8 Aug 2012 09:52:25 +0200 schrieb Paul Isambert:
> 
> 
> >> I personally don't care much *how* e.g. open type fonts are handled.
> >> The "typesetting engine" can use an external library, lua-files, or
> >> some library included in the binary. I care only *if* the core
> >> engine itself, the part advertised on the webpage, can handle the
> >> fonts like a bare xetex can handle them. 
> >> 
> >> Sorry, but can you imagine that a typesetting engine can thrive
> >> which must say on its webpage "I'm a wonderful tex engine based on
> >> unicode but if you want to use open type fonts you will have to
> >> write or adapt a lot of complicated code first".?
> > 
> > Honestly, yes :)
> > That's what TeX is to me anyway: a wonderful system that requires a lot
> > of hard work.
> > 
> > On http://www.luatex.org/roadmap.html, you can read:
> > 
> > There are two solutions for handling fonts: using the internal
> > functions that do what TeX has always done, or write a Lua function
> > that does a different job. As there are multiple solutions possible
> > and as we expect macro packages to have their own ways of dealing
> > with fonts, there is not one solution for dealing with fonts anyway.
> > Also, TeXies have always wanted full control over matters, and this
> > is provided by the Lua solution.
> 
> But allowing packages or formats to write and use their own code for
> open type fonts doesn't mean that the "luatex project" can ignore
> open type fonts completly. The fact that latex users can write
> beautiful and powerful packages e.g. for tabulars don't mean that
> the latex kernel don't have to provide code for tabulars.
> 
> I don't ask that a font loader should be included in the binary. A
> lua package which you can use in the font callback is fine. It is
> also okay if you need to adapt a configuration file before use e.g.
> to get it working with your texsystem or your os. The main point is
> that a working, default open type font loader should exist at all.

I think we simply disagree on the status of luaotfload. I see it as that
default fontloader you're talking about; non-ConTeXt users aren't
neglected (which was my starting point), thanks to it, although it
doesn't mean something better shouldn't be conceived by format authors.
As I understand you, it's not enough and it's imperfect anyway, so you
see the development of LuaTeX as terribly lacking in that respect.

I don't expect we'll agree on the subject, but at least I hope I got you
right.

> > In a few years, TeX users will have sprouted new wizards that'll deal
> > with fonts like the current wizards play with \output and \expandafter.
> 
> Two years ago I would have said this too. But now I doubt it.
> Opentype fonts are much more complicated that some expandafters or
> the latex output routine.

I'm not so sure. At least my personal experience tells me otherwise:
while OpenType was no pleasure cruise, it certainly wasn't as strange an
adventure as TeX.

>   Also - more importantly - I see none of
> the needed discussion going on. 

Until Khaled's recent announcement that he wouldn't continue luaotfload,
there was perhaps little need for most non-ConTeXt users; everybody was
more or less happy with the status quo; hopefully now people will act. I
haven't used luaotfload in months because I've developed my own
fontloader, and I know I'm not the only one in that position; sooner or
later something will emerge. All in all, we're not in a situation so
different to that where XeTeX is now, which spurred this discussion.

Perhaps I'm overly optimistic; yet I trust the community of TeXies,
which advances slowly yet decidedly.

Best,
Paul



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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Martin Schröder]

2012/8/8 Ulrike Fischer :
> Two years ago I would have said this too. But now I doubt it.
> Opentype fonts are much more complicated that some expandafters or
> the latex output routine. Also - more importantly - I see none of
> the needed discussion going on.

That discussion is not helped by discussing *LuaTeX* issues
on a *XeTeX* mailing list.

OTOH the upcoming EuroTeX conference will be an excellent
place for that discussion.

Best
   Martin


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Zdenek Wagner]

2012/8/8 Ulrike Fischer :
> Am Wed, 8 Aug 2012 09:52:25 +0200 schrieb Paul Isambert:
>
>
>>> I personally don't care much *how* e.g. open type fonts are handled.
>>> The "typesetting engine" can use an external library, lua-files, or
>>> some library included in the binary. I care only *if* the core
>>> engine itself, the part advertised on the webpage, can handle the
>>> fonts like a bare xetex can handle them.
>>>
>>> Sorry, but can you imagine that a typesetting engine can thrive
>>> which must say on its webpage "I'm a wonderful tex engine based on
>>> unicode but if you want to use open type fonts you will have to
>>> write or adapt a lot of complicated code first".?
>>
>> Honestly, yes :)
>> That's what TeX is to me anyway: a wonderful system that requires a lot
>> of hard work.
>>
>> On http://www.luatex.org/roadmap.html, you can read:
>>
>> There are two solutions for handling fonts: using the internal
>> functions that do what TeX has always done, or write a Lua function
>> that does a different job. As there are multiple solutions possible
>> and as we expect macro packages to have their own ways of dealing
>> with fonts, there is not one solution for dealing with fonts anyway.
>> Also, TeXies have always wanted full control over matters, and this
>> is provided by the Lua solution.
>
> But allowing packages or formats to write and use their own code for
> open type fonts doesn't mean that the "luatex project" can ignore
> open type fonts completly. The fact that latex users can write
> beautiful and powerful packages e.g. for tabulars don't mean that
> the latex kernel don't have to provide code for tabulars.
>
> I don't ask that a font loader should be included in the binary. A
> lua package which you can use in the font callback is fine. It is
> also okay if you need to adapt a configuration file before use e.g.
> to get it working with your texsystem or your os. The main point is
> that a working, default open type font loader should exist at all.
>
That's why most users do not compile TeX from sources and do not pick
files from CTAN but use TeX distributions. Such system dependent
modifications are already done there.
>
>> In a few years, TeX users will have sprouted new wizards that'll deal
>> with fonts like the current wizards play with \output and \expandafter.
>
> Two years ago I would have said this too. But now I doubt it.
> Opentype fonts are much more complicated that some expandafters or
> the latex output routine. Also - more importantly - I see none of
> the needed discussion going on.
>
When I started to work with TeX, literature could not be bought in
Czechoslovakia. I could not read the TeXbook. I looked into well
documented packages from the Mainz distribution. Reading an
explanation how a trick was solved using \expandafter I understood how
it works and became able to use it. On the contrary I have tried
several times to read the Indic OpenType specification but I still
understand nothing. Adding full OpenType + AAT + Graphite support to
luaotfload will not be an easy task.

> --
> Ulrike Fischer
> http://www.troubleshooting-tex.de/
>
>
>
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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Wed, 8 Aug 2012 09:52:25 +0200 schrieb Paul Isambert:


>> I personally don't care much *how* e.g. open type fonts are handled.
>> The "typesetting engine" can use an external library, lua-files, or
>> some library included in the binary. I care only *if* the core
>> engine itself, the part advertised on the webpage, can handle the
>> fonts like a bare xetex can handle them. 
>> 
>> Sorry, but can you imagine that a typesetting engine can thrive
>> which must say on its webpage "I'm a wonderful tex engine based on
>> unicode but if you want to use open type fonts you will have to
>> write or adapt a lot of complicated code first".?
> 
> Honestly, yes :)
> That's what TeX is to me anyway: a wonderful system that requires a lot
> of hard work.
> 
> On http://www.luatex.org/roadmap.html, you can read:
> 
> There are two solutions for handling fonts: using the internal
> functions that do what TeX has always done, or write a Lua function
> that does a different job. As there are multiple solutions possible
> and as we expect macro packages to have their own ways of dealing
> with fonts, there is not one solution for dealing with fonts anyway.
> Also, TeXies have always wanted full control over matters, and this
> is provided by the Lua solution.

But allowing packages or formats to write and use their own code for
open type fonts doesn't mean that the "luatex project" can ignore
open type fonts completly. The fact that latex users can write
beautiful and powerful packages e.g. for tabulars don't mean that
the latex kernel don't have to provide code for tabulars.

I don't ask that a font loader should be included in the binary. A
lua package which you can use in the font callback is fine. It is
also okay if you need to adapt a configuration file before use e.g.
to get it working with your texsystem or your os. The main point is
that a working, default open type font loader should exist at all. 

 
> In a few years, TeX users will have sprouted new wizards that'll deal
> with fonts like the current wizards play with \output and \expandafter.

Two years ago I would have said this too. But now I doubt it.
Opentype fonts are much more complicated that some expandafters or
the latex output routine. Also - more importantly - I see none of
the needed discussion going on. 

-- 
Ulrike Fischer 
http://www.troubleshooting-tex.de/



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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Zdenek Wagner]

2012/8/8 Paul Isambert :
> Ulrike Fischer  a écrit:
>> ...
>> LaTeX (and the other formats) were neglected because the development
>> of a vital part of the luatex-project - the open type font loader -
>> has not be developed in a format independant way.
>
> It has been, to some extent; and it's only transitional.
>
The LaTeX users do not need much, just luaotfload + fontspec +
polyglossia, all the rest can be taken from old LaTeX. And nice lua
features can be used to extend LaTeX.

> A 100% format-independent fontloader isn't really possible, unless you
> freeze it completely. If you want to add your own bells and whistles,
> which is what LuaTeX is about as far as I'm concerned, you have to
> adapt it, or better, in the case of formats, write it from scratch.
>
As a matter of fact from the user's point of view fonts can now be
handled in much easier way as never before. I buy a family of fonts,
put them to a directory where the operating system expects them and
that's it, fontspec does the rest. No tfm, no vf, no fd files. And
cryptic font names are no longer needed.

> Best,
> Paul
>
>
>
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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Paul Isambert]

Ulrike Fischer  a écrit:
> 
> Am Tue, 7 Aug 2012 08:51:41 +0200 schrieb Paul Isambert:
> 
>  
>  But there are also political issues: LuaTeX is developed by a
>  team focusing on ConTeXt. LaTeX users will always be neglected,
>  at least that is the feeling I have (Taco is very kind and
>  helpful but he is paid for a specific task, and LaTeX is not
>  part of it).
>   
> >>> I thought somebody would answer to that but nobody did, so (sorry to add
> >>> to this already too long thread, all the more as I won't even mention
> >>> XeTeX):
>   
> >>> Two members of the ``core'' LuaTeX team (Taco and Hans) are indeed two
> >>> main ConTeXt developers (and even original author, in Hans's case), but
> >>> I don't think you can say LuaTeX development focuses on ConTeXt (plus
> >>> Hartmut, the third member, is a LaTeX user, as far as I know). I'd
> >>> rather say that at most LuaTeX development may be driven by the needs
> >>> of ConTeXt developers, but that doesn't mean it benefits only to ConTeXt;
> >>> also, given ConTeXt's high standards, I think it's only for the best.
> >>> And the specific task Taco is paid for does not include LaTeX, but it
> >>> does not include ConTeXt either.
> >> 
> >> Well if you look only at the actual binary then yes your are right:
> >> it is not focused on context. But the handling of fonts is a core
> >> feature of a typesetting system. No user of a typesetting system
> >> would consider it to be complete if it can't handle standard fonts.
> >> So even if in luatex the font loader (including all the code needed
> >> to generate caches) is in external lua-files, it should nevertheless
> >> be considered to be part of "the luatex binary". It shouldn't
> >> delegate font handling to the formats.  
> 
> > I understand you're concerned about future font support in LuaTeX, but
> > technically the engine is little more than an extendable PDFTeX. 
> 
> I know this. But you are again looking only at the binary itself, at
> the "engine" in the narrow sense. I'm looking at the "typesetting
> project luatex". 
> 
> > Fonts follow that philosophy: TFM (with mapping to T1) fonts are
> > supported as in PDFTeX, other formats must be loaded and
> > processed by hand. Whether it's a good idea or not in that case I
> > don't know, but it is definitely consistent. (Actually I do think
> > it's a good idea, but I accept my opinion might be marginal.)
> 
> I personally don't care much *how* e.g. open type fonts are handled.
> The "typesetting engine" can use an external library, lua-files, or
> some library included in the binary. I care only *if* the core
> engine itself, the part advertised on the webpage, can handle the
> fonts like a bare xetex can handle them. 
> 
> Sorry, but can you imagine that a typesetting engine can thrive
> which must say on its webpage "I'm a wonderful tex engine based on
> unicode but if you want to use open type fonts you will have to
> write or adapt a lot of complicated code first".?

Honestly, yes :)
That's what TeX is to me anyway: a wonderful system that requires a lot
of hard work.

On http://www.luatex.org/roadmap.html, you can read:

There are two solutions for handling fonts: using the internal
functions that do what TeX has always done, or write a Lua function
that does a different job. As there are multiple solutions possible
and as we expect macro packages to have their own ways of dealing
with fonts, there is not one solution for dealing with fonts anyway.
Also, TeXies have always wanted full control over matters, and this
is provided by the Lua solution.

In a few years, TeX users will have sprouted new wizards that'll deal
with fonts like the current wizards play with \output and \expandafter.

> > Now, as I've already said, Hans has written a format-independent font
> > loader; somebody is only required to make the necessary adjustments to
> > (La)TeX, as Khaled did until recently. 
> 
> At first it should not be necessary "to make adjustments". A
> format-independant font loader should work like the extended
> \font-command of xetex "out-of-the box".

To me the XeTeX syntax is rather the frosting on the cake; the important
point is that a font be loaded and processed.

>  At second as some people
> complained here in the discussion the font loader doesn't work e.g.
> with indic fonts. At third it is undocumentated and unmaintained.

For that I'd say give it time, especially the ``unmaintained'' part:
Khaled has only recently announced that he stopped maintaining
luaotfload.

> > My main point was not whether LuaTeX was well-designed, but
> > whether (La)TeX users could be said to be neglected, which I
> > still think isn't the case.
> 
> LaTeX (and the other formats) were neglected because the development
> of a vital part of the luatex-project - the open type font loader -
> has not be developed in a format independant way. 

It has been, to some extent; and it's o

Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Keith J. Schultz]

Hi Zdenek,


Am 07.08.2012 um 10:36 schrieb Zdenek Wagner :

>> 
> Please do not mix engine and format. XeTeX does a few things i a
> different way than TeX. In the LaTeX user's eyes the font loading is
> different. It was not practical to modify the old LaTeX font loading
> packages, therefore fontspec was developed. Due to encodings and other
> reasons babel has to do a lot of additional things that are no longer
> needed, therefore it was more practical to develop polyglossia. In
> spite of all that the XeLaTeX syntax is exactly the same as the LaTeX
> syntax. Briefly speaking, if I have a pure LaTeX code with default CM
> fonts in OT1 encoding, I can process it by XeLaTeX without any
> modification. Modifying a more complex LaTeX document for processing
> by XeLaTeX is a matter of changing a few lines in the preamble but
> they reflect just the engine change (TeX -> XeTeX).
In principle LuaTeX is not different. There maybe just a little bit 
more code
needed.
At least there are provisions for handling of CM-fonts in LuaLaTeX.
Though full support may not been implemented, yet. I have seen parts
of code in the font loader. 
Actually, I would think it that hard of a task to do it if it done 
already.
But, why and how things are done in LuaTeX is something I will discuss
over on hier dev list.

regards
Keith.




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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Tue, 7 Aug 2012 00:06:23 -0700 schrieb Apostolos Syropoulos:


> Using TFMs and related technologies seems to me quite outdated.

No, it is not outdated. It is a very useful technology when you want
to handle special symbols or fonts. E.g. chess uses a lot of symbols
which have no unicode positions (e.g. masks to produce some color
effects) and so chess fonts have no standard encodings. The legacy
font system of tex makes it possible to use them without having to
wory about the correct input. 

But this are *special* cases. For normal text fonts I agree with
you: 

> Personally, I want to be able to use any font my system includes
> without having to do fancy transformations. 

It should be possible to use "normal fonts" without much fuss.


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Zdenek Wagner]

2012/8/7 Keith J. Schultz :
> Hi Apostolos, Ulrike, All,
>
> I agree TFMs are outdated, but for being backwards compatible the
> functionality
> has to be in there.
>
> From what I have so far understood about LuaTeX is that the font loader can
> handle
> about all types of fonts running around, today. Even AAT-fonts.
>
> In other words there is a possibility to  add ATSUI-functionality. If it is
> not there already.
>
> LuaTeX handles utf-8 natively and has support for older encodings, so no
> problem there
> either.
>
> One has to keep in mind that LuaTeX is still evolving. The developers have
> taken a very good
> approach:
> 1) get LuaTeX-proper working
> 2) add needed features
> 3) preserve backwards compatibility
>
> Missing features in the handling of eg. not so commonly used OT-features, is
> not necessarily
> an oversight on their part. Just, like the missing language support in TeX.
>
> So far, I do not see why LuaTeX can not have similar functionality as XeTeX.
> It will have a different
> syntax. just as XeTeX is different than LaTeX.
>
Please do not mix engine and format. XeTeX does a few things i a
different way than TeX. In the LaTeX user's eyes the font loading is
different. It was not practical to modify the old LaTeX font loading
packages, therefore fontspec was developed. Due to encodings and other
reasons babel has to do a lot of additional things that are no longer
needed, therefore it was more practical to develop polyglossia. In
spite of all that the XeLaTeX syntax is exactly the same as the LaTeX
syntax. Briefly speaking, if I have a pure LaTeX code with default CM
fonts in OT1 encoding, I can process it by XeLaTeX without any
modification. Modifying a more complex LaTeX document for processing
by XeLaTeX is a matter of changing a few lines in the preamble but
they reflect just the engine change (TeX -> XeTeX).

> To get there though one has to get involved.  The more involved the better
> the chance that packages
> will be written so it is no longer needed to do the processing by hand. This
> is the TeX-way.
>
> regards
> Keith.
>
>
> Am 07.08.2012 um 09:06 schrieb Apostolos Syropoulos :
>
> Ulrike Fischer  a écrit:
>
>
> I understand you're concerned about future font support in LuaTeX, but
> technically the engine is little more than an extendable PDFTeX. Fonts
> follow that philosophy: TFM (with mapping to T1) fonts are supported
> as in PDFTeX, other formats must be loaded and processed by hand. Whether
> it's a good idea or not in that case I don't know, but it is definitely
> consistent. (Actually I do think it's a good idea, but I accept my
> opinion might be marginal.)
>
>
> Using TFMs and related technologies seems to me quite outdated. Personally,
> I want to be able to use any font my system includes without having to do
> fancy transformations. This and XeTeX's capability to natively process
> UTF-8 source files were the factors that made me abandon "good", (really)
> old TeX. BTW, TeX itself is consistent too, but it is definitely outdated.
>
>
>
>
>
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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Keith J. Schultz]

Hi Apostolos, Ulrike, All,

I agree TFMs are outdated, but for being backwards compatible the functionality
has to be in there.

From what I have so far understood about LuaTeX is that the font loader can 
handle
about all types of fonts running around, today. Even AAT-fonts. 

In other words there is a possibility to  add ATSUI-functionality. If it is not 
there already.

LuaTeX handles utf-8 natively and has support for older encodings, so no 
problem there
either.

One has to keep in mind that LuaTeX is still evolving. The developers have 
taken a very good
approach:
1) get LuaTeX-proper working
2) add needed features
3) preserve backwards compatibility

Missing features in the handling of eg. not so commonly used OT-features, is 
not necessarily
an oversight on their part. Just, like the missing language support in TeX.

So far, I do not see why LuaTeX can not have similar functionality as XeTeX. It 
will have a different
syntax. just as XeTeX is different than LaTeX.

To get there though one has to get involved.  The more involved the better the 
chance that packages
will be written so it is no longer needed to do the processing by hand. This is 
the TeX-way.

regards
Keith.

 
Am 07.08.2012 um 09:06 schrieb Apostolos Syropoulos :

> Ulrike Fischer  a écrit:
>> 
>> I understand you're concerned about future font support in LuaTeX, but
>> technically the engine is little more than an extendable PDFTeX. Fonts
>> follow that philosophy: TFM (with mapping to T1) fonts are supported
>> as in PDFTeX, other formats must be loaded and processed by hand. Whether
>> it's a good idea or not in that case I don't know, but it is definitely
>> consistent. (Actually I do think it's a good idea, but I accept my
>> opinion might be marginal.)
>> 
> 
> Using TFMs and related technologies seems to me quite outdated. Personally,
> I want to be able to use any font my system includes without having to do
> fancy transformations. This and XeTeX's capability to natively process
> UTF-8 source files were the factors that made me abandon "good", (really)
> old TeX. BTW, TeX itself is consistent too, but it is definitely outdated.
> 



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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Tue, 7 Aug 2012 08:51:41 +0200 schrieb Paul Isambert:

 
 But there are also political issues: LuaTeX is developed by a
 team focusing on ConTeXt. LaTeX users will always be neglected,
 at least that is the feeling I have (Taco is very kind and
 helpful but he is paid for a specific task, and LaTeX is not
 part of it).
  
>>> I thought somebody would answer to that but nobody did, so (sorry to add
>>> to this already too long thread, all the more as I won't even mention
>>> XeTeX):
  
>>> Two members of the ``core'' LuaTeX team (Taco and Hans) are indeed two
>>> main ConTeXt developers (and even original author, in Hans's case), but
>>> I don't think you can say LuaTeX development focuses on ConTeXt (plus
>>> Hartmut, the third member, is a LaTeX user, as far as I know). I'd
>>> rather say that at most LuaTeX development may be driven by the needs
>>> of ConTeXt developers, but that doesn't mean it benefits only to ConTeXt;
>>> also, given ConTeXt's high standards, I think it's only for the best.
>>> And the specific task Taco is paid for does not include LaTeX, but it
>>> does not include ConTeXt either.
>> 
>> Well if you look only at the actual binary then yes your are right:
>> it is not focused on context. But the handling of fonts is a core
>> feature of a typesetting system. No user of a typesetting system
>> would consider it to be complete if it can't handle standard fonts.
>> So even if in luatex the font loader (including all the code needed
>> to generate caches) is in external lua-files, it should nevertheless
>> be considered to be part of "the luatex binary". It shouldn't
>> delegate font handling to the formats.  

> I understand you're concerned about future font support in LuaTeX, but
> technically the engine is little more than an extendable PDFTeX. 

I know this. But you are again looking only at the binary itself, at
the "engine" in the narrow sense. I'm looking at the "typesetting
project luatex". 

> Fonts follow that philosophy: TFM (with mapping to T1) fonts are
> supported as in PDFTeX, other formats must be loaded and
> processed by hand. Whether it's a good idea or not in that case I
> don't know, but it is definitely consistent. (Actually I do think
> it's a good idea, but I accept my opinion might be marginal.)

I personally don't care much *how* e.g. open type fonts are handled.
The "typesetting engine" can use an external library, lua-files, or
some library included in the binary. I care only *if* the core
engine itself, the part advertised on the webpage, can handle the
fonts like a bare xetex can handle them. 

Sorry, but can you imagine that a typesetting engine can thrive
which must say on its webpage "I'm a wonderful tex engine based on
unicode but if you want to use open type fonts you will have to
write or adapt a lot of complicated code first".? 



> 
> Now, as I've already said, Hans has written a format-independent font
> loader; somebody is only required to make the necessary adjustments to
> (La)TeX, as Khaled did until recently. 

At first it should not be necessary "to make adjustments". A
format-independant font loader should work like the extended
\font-command of xetex "out-of-the box". At second as some people
complained here in the discussion the font loader doesn't work e.g.
with indic fonts. At third it is undocumentated and unmaintained. 


> My main point was not whether LuaTeX was well-designed, but
> whether (La)TeX users could be said to be neglected, which I
> still think isn't the case.

LaTeX (and the other formats) were neglected because the development
of a vital part of the luatex-project - the open type font loader -
has not be developed in a format independant way. 


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Apostolos Syropoulos]

> 
> I understand you're concerned about future font support in LuaTeX, but
> technically the engine is little more than an extendable PDFTeX. Fonts
> follow that philosophy: TFM (with mapping to T1) fonts are supported
> as in PDFTeX, other formats must be loaded and processed by hand. Whether
> it's a good idea or not in that case I don't know, but it is definitely
> consistent. (Actually I do think it's a good idea, but I accept my
> opinion might be marginal.)
> 

Using TFMs and related technologies seems to me quite outdated. Personally,
I want to be able to use any font my system includes without having to do
fancy transformations. This and XeTeX's capability to natively process
UTF-8 source files were the factors that made me abandon "good", (really)
old TeX. BTW, TeX itself is consistent too, but it is definitely outdated.

A.S.
 

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Xanthi, Greece




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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Paul Isambert]

Ulrike Fischer  a écrit:
> 
> Am Sat, 4 Aug 2012 09:38:44 +0200 schrieb Paul Isambert:
> 
> 
> >> But there are also political issues: LuaTeX is developed by a
> >> team focusing on ConTeXt. LaTeX users will always be neglected,
> >> at least that is the feeling I have (Taco is very kind and
> >> helpful but he is paid for a specific task, and LaTeX is not
> >> part of it).
>  
> > I thought somebody would answer to that but nobody did, so (sorry to add
> > to this already too long thread, all the more as I won't even mention
> > XeTeX):
>  
> > Two members of the ``core'' LuaTeX team (Taco and Hans) are indeed two
> > main ConTeXt developers (and even original author, in Hans's case), but
> > I don't think you can say LuaTeX development focuses on ConTeXt (plus
> > Hartmut, the third member, is a LaTeX user, as far as I know). I'd
> > rather say that at most LuaTeX development may be driven by the needs
> > of ConTeXt developers, but that doesn't mean it benefits only to ConTeXt;
> > also, given ConTeXt's high standards, I think it's only for the best.
> > And the specific task Taco is paid for does not include LaTeX, but it
> > does not include ConTeXt either.
> 
> Well if you look only at the actual binary then yes your are right:
> it is not focused on context. But the handling of fonts is a core
> feature of a typesetting system. No user of a typesetting system
> would consider it to be complete if it can't handle standard fonts.
> So even if in luatex the font loader (including all the code needed
> to generate caches) is in external lua-files, it should nevertheless
> be considered to be part of "the luatex binary". It shouldn't
> delegate font handling to the formats.  

I understand you're concerned about future font support in LuaTeX, but
technically the engine is little more than an extendable PDFTeX. Fonts
follow that philosophy: TFM (with mapping to T1) fonts are supported
as in PDFTeX, other formats must be loaded and processed by hand. Whether
it's a good idea or not in that case I don't know, but it is definitely
consistent. (Actually I do think it's a good idea, but I accept my
opinion might be marginal.)

Now, as I've already said, Hans has written a format-independent font
loader; somebody is only required to make the necessary adjustments to
(La)TeX, as Khaled did until recently. My main point was not whether
LuaTeX was well-designed, but whether (La)TeX users could be said to be
neglected, which I still think isn't the case.

Best,
Paul



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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Martin Schröder]

2012/8/6 Zdenek Wagner :
> The fontspec package is already available in lualatex.

It needs luaotfload, which is currently unmaintained.

Best
   Martin


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Zdenek Wagner]

2012/8/6 Ulrike Fischer :
> Am Sat, 4 Aug 2012 09:38:44 +0200 schrieb Paul Isambert:
>
>
>>> But there are also political issues: LuaTeX is developed by a
>>> team focusing on ConTeXt. LaTeX users will always be neglected,
>>> at least that is the feeling I have (Taco is very kind and
>>> helpful but he is paid for a specific task, and LaTeX is not
>>> part of it).
>
>> I thought somebody would answer to that but nobody did, so (sorry to add
>> to this already too long thread, all the more as I won't even mention
>> XeTeX):
>
>> Two members of the ``core'' LuaTeX team (Taco and Hans) are indeed two
>> main ConTeXt developers (and even original author, in Hans's case), but
>> I don't think you can say LuaTeX development focuses on ConTeXt (plus
>> Hartmut, the third member, is a LaTeX user, as far as I know). I'd
>> rather say that at most LuaTeX development may be driven by the needs
>> of ConTeXt developers, but that doesn't mean it benefits only to ConTeXt;
>> also, given ConTeXt's high standards, I think it's only for the best.
>> And the specific task Taco is paid for does not include LaTeX, but it
>> does not include ConTeXt either.
>
> Well if you look only at the actual binary then yes your are right:
> it is not focused on context. But the handling of fonts is a core
> feature of a typesetting system. No user of a typesetting system
> would consider it to be complete if it can't handle standard fonts.
> So even if in luatex the font loader (including all the code needed
> to generate caches) is in external lua-files, it should nevertheless
> be considered to be part of "the luatex binary". It shouldn't
> delegate font handling to the formats.
>
The fontspec package is already available in lualatex.
>
> --
> Ulrike Fischer
> http://www.troubleshooting-tex.de/
>
>
>
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> Subscriptions, Archive, and List information, etc.:
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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Sat, 4 Aug 2012 09:38:44 +0200 schrieb Paul Isambert:


>> But there are also political issues: LuaTeX is developed by a
>> team focusing on ConTeXt. LaTeX users will always be neglected,
>> at least that is the feeling I have (Taco is very kind and
>> helpful but he is paid for a specific task, and LaTeX is not
>> part of it).
 
> I thought somebody would answer to that but nobody did, so (sorry to add
> to this already too long thread, all the more as I won't even mention
> XeTeX):
 
> Two members of the ``core'' LuaTeX team (Taco and Hans) are indeed two
> main ConTeXt developers (and even original author, in Hans's case), but
> I don't think you can say LuaTeX development focuses on ConTeXt (plus
> Hartmut, the third member, is a LaTeX user, as far as I know). I'd
> rather say that at most LuaTeX development may be driven by the needs
> of ConTeXt developers, but that doesn't mean it benefits only to ConTeXt;
> also, given ConTeXt's high standards, I think it's only for the best.
> And the specific task Taco is paid for does not include LaTeX, but it
> does not include ConTeXt either.

Well if you look only at the actual binary then yes your are right:
it is not focused on context. But the handling of fonts is a core
feature of a typesetting system. No user of a typesetting system
would consider it to be complete if it can't handle standard fonts.
So even if in luatex the font loader (including all the code needed
to generate caches) is in external lua-files, it should nevertheless
be considered to be part of "the luatex binary". It shouldn't
delegate font handling to the formats.  


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Paul Isambert]

Yannis Haralambous  a écrit:
> But there are also political issues: LuaTeX is developed by a team focusing 
> on ConTeXt.
> LaTeX users will always be neglected, at least that is the feeling I have 
> (Taco is very kind
> and helpful but he is paid for a specific task, and LaTeX is not part of it).

I thought somebody would answer to that but nobody did, so (sorry to add
to this already too long thread, all the more as I won't even mention
XeTeX):

Two members of the ``core'' LuaTeX team (Taco and Hans) are indeed two
main ConTeXt developers (and even original author, in Hans's case), but
I don't think you can say LuaTeX development focuses on ConTeXt (plus
Hartmut, the third member, is a LaTeX user, as far as I know). I'd
rather say that at most LuaTeX development may be driven by the needs
of ConTeXt developers, but that doesn't mean it benefits only to ConTeXt;
also, given ConTeXt's high standards, I think it's only for the best.
And the specific task Taco is paid for does not include LaTeX, but it
does not include ConTeXt either.

For LaTeX users to be neglected, there should be some particular LaTeX
needs that the LuaTeX team does not pay attention to; but I can't see
such a need.

I use neither ConTeXt nor LaTeX, but plain TeX, and I've always found
Taco willing to implement features when they were sensible; on the other
hand, I've never felt this or that (lack of) feature was due to LuaTeX
being written for ConTeXt, and I think that's because it isn't. In other
words, I've never felt neglected.

Now, if you have in mind not so much the development of LuaTeX itself
but of packages written for LuaTeX, then indeed non-ConTeXt users may
be lagging behind. But that's not due to the LuaTeX team; Hans is working
hard to adapt ConTeXt to LuaTeX; we should work hard to do the same in
other formats (and actually some people do). Also remember that Hans
wrote a generic fontloader so it could be adapted to all formats (in
the guise of luaotfload, notwithstanding the current problematic state
of affairs). So, in general, if non-ConTeXt users should feel neglected,
that's only because of a lack of development of code based on LuaTeX;
but that's not an argument against the engine itself.

Best,
Paul



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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Chris Travers]

On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 8:34 AM, Apostolos Syropoulos
 wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have read all these messages and frankly I think we need less
>
> talking and more coding. If anyone has the knowledge, the time
>
> and the energy to get involved, that would help greatly the
> project. Personally, I would like to help, but I have to wait
>
> until Autumn: in the summer one cannot think clearly especially
> when it is too hot.

Great.  In your estimation, what can the community do to help support
you getting started here?

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 07/30/2012 05:53 PM, Khaled Hosny wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 08:27:46PM -0400, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
>> On 07/30/2012 08:23 PM, Khaled Hosny wrote:
>>> Does this mean HarfBuzz will support AAT fonts (even if only on Mac
>>> through CoreText)? Because if not, we will still need to port XeTeX from
>>> ATSUI to CoreText (as that is deprecated API being referred to) and no
>>> body who knows how to do this seems interested.
>>
>> The CoreText backend in HarfBuzz does that indeed.
> 
> I've been under the impression that Uniscribe and CoreText backends were
> merely for testing, but if they are indented for production use that
> would help simplifying things greatly.

There's little point in using the Uniscribe backend in production.  CoreText
is different.  Until we have an implementation of AAT, it makes perfect sense
to make HarfBuzz call into CoreText if AAT rendering deems to be desirable.
Same about Graphite.

behdad

> Regards,
>  Khaled
> 


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Keith J. Schultz]

Hi All,

No, Apostolos is right.

Things got a little to OT.

I apologize. I will next time listen to my inner feelings.

regards
Keith.

Am 02.08.2012 um 17:38 schrieb Philip TAYLOR :

> 
> 
> Apostolos Syropoulos wrote:
> 
>> I fully agree with this remark. I suppose there are
>> special lists for people interested in luaTeX and/or
>> Context.
> 
> but are there special lists for people interested in both
> XeTeX /and/ LuaTeX (let us compare only like with like) ?
> 
> If not (and I think not), then it is clear that a debate
> involving both (as does the present debate) will take
> place either on a XeTeX list or on a LuaTeX list or even
> on both; as Professor Wedderburn would have said "There
> is no alternative".
> 



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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Philip TAYLOR]

Apostolos Syropoulos wrote:


I fully agree with this remark. I suppose there are
special lists for people interested in luaTeX and/or
Context.


but are there special lists for people interested in both
XeTeX /and/ LuaTeX (let us compare only like with like) ?

If not (and I think not), then it is clear that a debate
involving both (as does the present debate) will take
place either on a XeTeX list or on a LuaTeX list or even
on both; as Professor Wedderburn would have said "There
is no alternative".

Philip Taylor


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Apostolos Syropoulos]

Hello,

I have read all these messages and frankly I think we need less 

talking and more coding. If anyone has the knowledge, the time 

and the energy to get involved, that would help greatly the
project. Personally, I would like to help, but I have to wait 

until Autumn: in the summer one cannot think clearly especially
when it is too hot.

A.S.

 
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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Apostolos Syropoulos]

> EOD: This is not the place for discussions about LuaTeX.
> 
> Best
>    Martin
> 

I fully agree with this remark. I suppose there are
special lists for people interested in luaTeX and/or
Context. 

A.S.
 

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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Keith J. Schultz]

Hi Martin,

I answering this as it goes for any software project.

Those papers are nice and can help in general understanding, but
they are to be of real use to a real programmer. Furthermore,
if the are really relevant than then should be part of the source code
distribution. 

There are different kinds of Documentation. TeX has a literate programming
documentation style. In the TeX-world of today the source code documentation
is minimal, where the API documentation is decent enough, if you know TeX.
Then problem is that all that information in the papers should be in the source
code!!

Yes, it bloats the  source code ten fold! But, all one needs to do is look at 
the header
files and you understand what is being done. You do not need to understand the
programming language, because it is all in the comments. 

Then the is the Program Specification. This is where you put in the rational, 
the design choices,
the Graphics. What is all this good for you might ask. 
1) Program varifiblity
2) Program mantainace
4) Porgram portabibilty
5) Cooperation during development

It is all good software engineering. You do not need everything state of art. 
Yet, a little more
natural language goes a long way.

XeTeX could profit from this. As well as all other project. 

The bigger the project, the more people involved, the more technologies 
involved, the more
important good documentation practices are needed. A decent programmer just 
needs a halfway
decent specification to program anything. A programmer does not need to 
understand XeTeX, inorder
to write the engine he needs to know what needs to go inside the engine.

Lets take the XeTeX Font Manager and ATSUI. ATSUI was a comfortable way for 
handling
the AAT-Font features. Know if it where documented in the source what data 
structures and
which routine XeTeX used internally for handling the AAT-Font features It would 
not be hard
to replace ATSUI with something else, because all you need to do is read the 
Advance True Type
Font tables and put them into the internal data structures and maybe patch a 
routine or two.

But, that is not documented anywhere. Come to think of it I believe, the 
problem is that there should
have been another layer in there and XeTeX would not have the problem it has 
today with ATSUI

So, my advice is now, who ever, when ever and another layer into the Font 
Manager of XeTeX, so that
when the next pradigma change comes around the calls to ATSUI, or Core Text, or 
what ever only need to be
updated and not the entire Font Manager for AAT-Fonts.

And that was not a negative critic, just good advice form a programmers point 
of view.





Am 02.08.2012 um 15:22 schrieb Martin Schröder :

> 2012/8/1 Keith J. Schultz :
>> As has been mentioned the source and programming rational behind
>> LuaTeX is not documented, at least not publically. Even if one would
>> do the programming their is no guarantee that the code will be used or
>> allowed.
> 
> There have been numerous papers and talks by the team.
> Patches are always welcome.
> 
> Everybody is free to take the code and fork the project.
> 
> EOD: This is not the place for discussions about LuaTeX.
> 
> Best
>   Martin
> 
> 
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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[John Was]

Hello.

I would certainly try to contribute financially (though now isn't the best 
time!) for someone (or a team) to develop a 'custom kerning' feature that 
would allow XeTeX users to add to and modify the kerning pairs of a font 
without actually intervening in the font, with a rubric like this:


\font \umirfive = 
"MinionPro-Regular:+onum:mapping=tex-text:letterspace=1.5:kern=[d:\kerntables\minionkern.krn]" 
at 5pt


The file minionkern.krn would list the kerning pairs to add to or override 
the information supplied with the font.


The last time this came up, I think the consensus among the Wizards is that 
it would be very difficult in XeTeX because of the point at which XeTeX 
reads in such information about a font (whereas it's already doable in 
LuaTeX, I believe, though I'd rather stick with XeTeX if at all possible).


There - my first and probably last contribution to the suggested 'to-do' 
list.


John


- Original Message - 
From: "Chris Travers" 

To: "Unicode-based TeX for Mac OS X and other platforms" 
Sent: 02 August 2012 15:43
Subject: Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX


if I may be so bold as to jump in.

On Wed, Aug 1, 2012 at 6:57 AM, Simon Spiegel  wrote:


On 01.08.2012, at 15:45, Philip TAYLOR  wrote:




Simon Spiegel wrote:

> And it might be a good idea to come up with ideas how we can find this 
> someone.


"ideas how we can ..." involves discussion, unless you are
advocating implementation by fiat, which I am sure you are
not.  So what it would seem you are advocating is that we
cease technical discussions and move on to personnel
discussions -- well, I for one am perfectly happy to leave
the personnel discussion to you and to others : technicalities,
problems and potential solutions interest me enormously,
and I am happy to continue to debate those; "who does what"
is a matter of little or no concern,


I guess it is of little or no concern if you're not interested in actually 
getting something done. As a user I'm much more interested in how I can 
get working tools.


But since I'm not interested in proving my own point – that discussions on 
the future of *TeX tend to drift somewhere where things don't get done –, 
I'm stopping this here.




What I am getting out of a lot of the discussions so far is that there
is a lot of work to be done and not a lot of people doing things that
need to be done.  I am primarily a user of XeTeX and LaTeX but what we
are talking about  what is essentially a community problem rather than
a technical problem.  Yes, TeX has a large following, but how many
people are working on LuaTeX and XeTeX themselves?

The key question in my view is how to enable people to get involved.
To this end, I think you really need to try to get involvement from
both coders and non-coders.

Some thing non-coders can do in (almost) any open source project:

1)  Pick something you really want to see done
2)  Talk to people about what is required, write up concerns,
obstacles, to-do lists, etc.
3)  Talk to other people find out how widespread the demand is.  If
there sufficient demand, look at organizing funding
4)  Offer to collaborate as testers, etc. on the new feature.  You can
do this even if you don't code.
5)  Advocacy work for the project in general

Often folks who are coding are too busy to get to some of the other
stuff and users are better positioned to help try to organize some
support for the project.   Developer community is where it is at
though.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers



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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Chris Travers]

if I may be so bold as to jump in.

On Wed, Aug 1, 2012 at 6:57 AM, Simon Spiegel  wrote:
>
> On 01.08.2012, at 15:45, Philip TAYLOR  wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Simon Spiegel wrote:
>>
>> > And it might be a good idea to come up with ideas how we can find this 
>> > someone.
>>
>> "ideas how we can ..." involves discussion, unless you are
>> advocating implementation by fiat, which I am sure you are
>> not.  So what it would seem you are advocating is that we
>> cease technical discussions and move on to personnel
>> discussions -- well, I for one am perfectly happy to leave
>> the personnel discussion to you and to others : technicalities,
>> problems and potential solutions interest me enormously,
>> and I am happy to continue to debate those; "who does what"
>> is a matter of little or no concern,
>
> I guess it is of little or no concern if you're not interested in actually 
> getting something done. As a user I'm much more interested in how I can get 
> working tools.
>
> But since I'm not interested in proving my own point – that discussions on 
> the future of *TeX tend to drift somewhere where things don't get done –, I'm 
> stopping this here.
>

What I am getting out of a lot of the discussions so far is that there
is a lot of work to be done and not a lot of people doing things that
need to be done.  I am primarily a user of XeTeX and LaTeX but what we
are talking about  what is essentially a community problem rather than
a technical problem.  Yes, TeX has a large following, but how many
people are working on LuaTeX and XeTeX themselves?

The key question in my view is how to enable people to get involved.
To this end, I think you really need to try to get involvement from
both coders and non-coders.

Some thing non-coders can do in (almost) any open source project:

1)  Pick something you really want to see done
2)  Talk to people about what is required, write up concerns,
obstacles, to-do lists, etc.
3)  Talk to other people find out how widespread the demand is.  If
there sufficient demand, look at organizing funding
4)  Offer to collaborate as testers, etc. on the new feature.  You can
do this even if you don't code.
5)  Advocacy work for the project in general

Often folks who are coding are too busy to get to some of the other
stuff and users are better positioned to help try to organize some
support for the project.   Developer community is where it is at
though.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers



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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Zdenek Wagner]

2012/8/2 Peter Dyballa :
>
> Am 02.08.2012 um 14:53 schrieb Martin Schröder:
>
>> AFAIK only protusion. I doubt that expansion is possible with XeTeX.
>
> It's just as with DVI output. (I presume DVI and XDV must be related somehow.)
>
XDV is an extensin of DVI.
> --
> Mit friedvollen Grüßen
>
>   Pete
>
> Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a night, but set a man on fire and 
> he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
>
>
>
>
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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Martin Schröder]

2012/8/1 Keith J. Schultz :
> As has been mentioned the source and programming rational behind
> LuaTeX is not documented, at least not publically. Even if one would
> do the programming their is no guarantee that the code will be used or
> allowed.

There have been numerous papers and talks by the team.
Patches are always welcome.

Everybody is free to take the code and fork the project.

EOD: This is not the place for discussions about LuaTeX.

Best
   Martin


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Wed, 1 Aug 2012 19:28:44 +0200 schrieb Keith J. Schultz:

> As has been mentioned the source and programming rational behind 
> LuaTeX is not documented, at least not publically.

LuaTeX itself has a documentation. The font loader code used by
context and luaotfload is the problem. 



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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 02.08.2012 um 14:53 schrieb Martin Schröder:

> AFAIK only protusion. I doubt that expansion is possible with XeTeX.

It's just as with DVI output. (I presume DVI and XDV must be related somehow.)

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  Pete

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a night, but set a man on fire and 
he'll be warm for the rest of his life.




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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Zdenek Wagner]

2012/8/2 Martin Schröder :
> 2012/8/2 Peter Dyballa :
>> XeTeX has been patched to enable micro-typography in TeX Live 2009. To make 
>> use of it you need the microtype package v2.5, beta (microtype-xetex.def). 
>> This came with TeX Live 2010.
>
> AFAIK only protusion. I doubt that expansion is possible with XeTeX.
>
This is the more difficult part. If you take Hindi word STHITI, then
due to glyph reordering the word graphically starts with I and ends
with T but according to unicode code points it starts with S and ends
with I. Protrusion algorithm has to understand reordering in Indic
scripts in order to work properly.

> Best
>Martin
>
>
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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Martin Schröder]

2012/8/2 Peter Dyballa :
> XeTeX has been patched to enable micro-typography in TeX Live 2009. To make 
> use of it you need the microtype package v2.5, beta (microtype-xetex.def). 
> This came with TeX Live 2010.

AFAIK only protusion. I doubt that expansion is possible with XeTeX.

Best
   Martin


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 01.08.2012 um 13:37 schrieb Simon Spiegel:

> Similar with microtype for XeTeX. Until I'm mistaken we still only have parts 
> of microtype implemented for XeTeX and only in a beta version of microtype. 
> Again I hear that this should be doable for XeTeX but nothing has happened so 
> far.

XeTeX has been patched to enable micro-typography in TeX Live 2009. To make use 
of it you need the microtype package v2.5, beta (microtype-xetex.def). This 
came with TeX Live 2010.

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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Zdenek Wagner]

2012/8/2 BPJ :
> On 2012-08-01 13:44, Zdenek Wagner wrote:
>>
>> 2012/8/1 BPJ :
>>>
>>> On 2012-08-01 01:48, Arthur Reutenauer wrote:
>>>
>How does this
> affect what one can do with lua in luatex?



 It does not, really.  And this is not relevant to a discussion about
 XeTeX.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> It is, since it may determine how dependent I and others
>>> may be on xetex still being around.  If the replacement
>>> can't do what you want then you can't do the switch.
>>>
>>> However I very much like being able to use teckit mappings,
>>> so I really wish xetex will stay around.
>>>
>> If you find the right hook, you can do the same eg with regular
>> expressions. it will be possible to do even more then with teckit but
>> the correct hooks must be found.
>
>
> Of course -- I have written transliterators for use outside the
> TeX world -- but it's very convenient to have such a thing
> ready-made! :-)
>
Is your transliteration available somewhere? I would like to see how
it works and which hooks are used.

> /bpj
>
>
>
>
>
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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[BPJ]

On 2012-08-01 13:44, Zdenek Wagner wrote:

2012/8/1 BPJ :

On 2012-08-01 01:48, Arthur Reutenauer wrote:


   How does this
affect what one can do with lua in luatex?



It does not, really.  And this is not relevant to a discussion about
XeTeX.



It is, since it may determine how dependent I and others
may be on xetex still being around.  If the replacement
can't do what you want then you can't do the switch.

However I very much like being able to use teckit mappings,
so I really wish xetex will stay around.


If you find the right hook, you can do the same eg with regular
expressions. it will be possible to do even more then with teckit but
the correct hooks must be found.


Of course -- I have written transliterators for use outside the
TeX world -- but it's very convenient to have such a thing
ready-made! :-)

/bpj




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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Zdenek Wagner]

2012/8/2 Arthur Reutenauer :
>> I remember specifically testing some Nastaliq fonts and Hans fixing some
>> small issues I found, I just tested again now and IranNastaliq seems to
>> work
>
>   OK cool, good to know.
>
It's just a matter of a few characters that are used in Urdu but not
in Arabic. If lua can handle them and select proper form, it should be
fine. I wanted to try, I already ave a short Urdu text in my computer
but I do not know how lualatex switches LTR and RTL modes, I will have
to find and read some documentation...

> Arthur
>
>
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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Arthur Reutenauer]

> I remember specifically testing some Nastaliq fonts and Hans fixing some
> small issues I found, I just tested again now and IranNastaliq seems to
> work

  OK cool, good to know.

Arthur


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Khaled Hosny]

On Wed, Aug 01, 2012 at 11:37:31PM +0100, Arthur Reutenauer wrote:
>   My wondering was more whether what ConTeXt implements was actually
> enough for Urdu (and other languages).  As far as I know Oriental TeX is
> only concerned with Arabic texts.  But it's entirely possible that Urdu
> would just work out of the box with ConTeXt / luaotfload's shaping
> engine.

I remember specifically testing some Nastaliq fonts and Hans fixing some
small issues I found, I just tested again now and IranNastaliq seems to
work (my fork of Nafees Nastaleeq is broken though, but it uses an
OpenType GDEF feature not supported by LuaTeX's font loader, so this is
expected and not even Arabic specific).

Regards,
 Khaled


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Arthur Reutenauer]

  My wondering was more whether what ConTeXt implements was actually
enough for Urdu (and other languages).  As far as I know Oriental TeX is
only concerned with Arabic texts.  But it's entirely possible that Urdu
would just work out of the box with ConTeXt / luaotfload's shaping
engine.

Arthur


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Khaled Hosny]

On Wed, Aug 01, 2012 at 10:41:25PM +0100, Arthur Reutenauer wrote:
> >> Arabic should work fine, but I'm not even sure about Syriac, for
> >> example.
> >
> > How about Urdu? It will be difficult for me but I can try to run some tests.
> 
>   I don't think it would work, actually.  I should have written "Arabic
> Naskh" instead of plain Arabic.  Clearly Nastaliq won't work out of the
> box, as it is not handled by ConTeXt to the best of my knowledge, hence
> not by luaotfload either.

There is nothing special about Nastaliq fonts, they are just regular
Arabic OpenType fonts (though good ones are more complex than average
Arabic fonts, but the same can be said about good Naskh fonts as well),
nor there is anything inherently Urduish about Nastaliq (or Nastaliqish
about Urdu), it can, and does, use Naskh (or Riqa'a or any other style)
just fine.

Regards,
 Khaled


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Arthur Reutenauer]

> Whenever anything is available for testing, I can try some Czech and
> Slovak texts.

  Thanks.  I will let you know when it's ready to be tested.

>> Arabic should work fine, but I'm not even sure about Syriac, for
>> example.
>
> How about Urdu? It will be difficult for me but I can try to run some tests.

  I don't think it would work, actually.  I should have written "Arabic
Naskh" instead of plain Arabic.  Clearly Nastaliq won't work out of the
box, as it is not handled by ConTeXt to the best of my knowledge, hence
not by luaotfload either.

Arthur


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[mskala]

On Wed, 1 Aug 2012, David Perry wrote:
> Yes, there are flaws in XeTeX, e.g., in connection with Hangul support.  But I

I think XeTeX actually works quite well with hangul if the appropriate
features are turned on, and it sounds like their not being so was a bug
that's easy to fix.  It was already easy to work around.  The
glyph-pointer bug in ICU is rather more serious, but that is a general bug
in all contextual substitutions that happens to affect hangul; it's not
anything to do with hangul in particular and affects all other uses of
contextual substitutions too (an example involving Greek was discussed on
this list).

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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Simon Spiegel]

> 
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2012 18:12:20 +0100
> From: Arthur Reutenauer 
> To: Unicode-based TeX for Mac OS X and other platforms 
> Subject: Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX
> Message-ID: <20120801171220.gp6...@phare.normalesup.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> 
> 
>  As for the discussion at hand, I have no intention to participate in
> it -- although I'm afraid I'm going to be dragged into it.  This kind of
> talk is one of the most demotivating phenomena in open source
> development, or in any volunteer community, for that matter.  Having to
> go over hundreds and hundreds of emails in a couple of days, few of
> which seem to focus on concrete issues (when they're not unmitigated
> drivel), just drains any person's enthusiasm and energy -- not to
> mention time.  As Simon Spiegel asked what the reason was for the
> seemingly little progress in the XeTeX world in the past couple of
> years, I can answer for my part: this is it.  This kind of endless
> threads on mailing-lists is the main organic reason why I don't invest
> more time in development, as far as I'm concerned.  And I'm sure this is
> the case for other core developers too.

I actually wasn't asking but merely stating my opinion that this kind of 
discussion will not solve the problems at hand. People who actually code do. 
But your example seems to confirm my impression.

Simon
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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Zdenek Wagner]

2012/8/1 Philip TAYLOR :
>
>
> Zdenek Wagner wrote:
>
>> !cibarA ot tebaphla nitaL eth tpada ot decrof erew ew fi neppah dlouw
>> tahw enigami dnA
>
>
> ... "eht", not "eth" :-)
>
Thank you for correcting my misprint.
>
>
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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Philip TAYLOR]

Zdenek Wagner wrote:


!cibarA ot tebaphla nitaL eth tpada ot decrof erew ew fi neppah dlouw
tahw enigami dnA


... "eht", not "eth" :-)


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[David Perry]

Let me try to focus this discussion back to a more general level.  Keep 
in mind that I am a scholar and sometime font creator, not a programmer.


A great many people, myself included, must use non-Latin scripts in 
their work.  They may also need to produce typographically sophisticated 
documents for publication, using advanced font technologies.  Xe(La)TeX 
is /amazing/ in that it (along with Polyglossia) can do all of this, and 
for free, whether one wants to use AAT, Graphite, or OpenType fonts. 
Language support, thanks to Unicode, has gradually worked its way into 
current OSs; but there are still many of us who remember what a 
nightmare it was to use Greek or Cyrillic, to say nothing of Arabic or 
Devanagari, in pre-Unicode days.  Advanced typographic support is 
gradually improving in mainstream apps, but still not where I'd like to 
see it, sometimes even in high-priced software that is designed for 
professional typesetting.


Yes, there are flaws in XeTeX, e.g., in connection with Hangul support. 
 But I repeat: from the larger perspective, XeTeX is without peer in 
terms of what it lets one accomplish in multilingual, high-quality 
typesetting.  I am in awe of what Jonathan and others were able to do in 
updating TeX to meet these modern needs.


I very much hope that XeTeX will be around for a long time.  It was 
reassuring that hear that Khaled, with some help from Jonathan, will 
help XeTeX continue; I hope there are others who can help too.  But the 
bottom line is that there can be no real replacement for XeTeX without 
support for multilingual typesetting, including complex scripts.  Those 
who want to develop new flavors of TeX are welcome to do so, and maybe 
someday one of them will have evolved to the point where it can replace 
Xe(La)TeX.  That may be a good thing, but I suspect it's a long way off.


David



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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Zdenek Wagner]

2012/8/1 Keith J. Schultz :
> Hi Zdenek,
>
> I am perfectly, able to learn what I need to learn. I am perfectly able
> to program in almost any programming langauge. TeX is one that I
> can directly program in because I simple can grasp its philosophy.
>
> The biggest problem to all this at what is needed is so essential, that
> without the proper documentation of what has been the task becomes
> absolutely enormous.
>
> As has been mentioned the source and programming rational behind
> LuaTeX is not documented, at least not publically. Even if one would
> do the programming their is no guarantee that the code will be used or
> allowed.
>
If you implement support for Indic scripts, preferably both OpenType
and Graphite, and make it available on CTAN, it will certainly be
used. People in India will be happy.

> That is why nobody is willing or can actually step up to bat. Of course one 
> could
> always spin off, then ... ... ...
>
Authors of existing free libraries ad Pango or HarfBuzz know how much
work it is. I am nto surprised that they do not wish to do the same in
lua. These packages are used in many programs, the lua port will be
used in one program only.

> regards
> Keith
>
>
> Am 01.08.2012 um 16:29 schrieb Zdenek Wagner :
>
>> The discussion clarifies what has to be done. It is useless to find a
>> person to do a job if you do not know what the job is and what the
>> person must know or learn in order to be able to do it.
>
>
>
>
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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Zdenek Wagner]

2012/8/1 Ulrike Fischer :
> Am Wed, 1 Aug 2012 17:17:15 +0100 schrieb Philip TAYLOR:
>
>> Keith J. Schultz wrote:
>>
>>>  That is probaly teh biggest turn off to LuaTeX.
>>>  They should some people in as far as coding is concerned.
>>>  The missing documentation is something I would call a cardinal
>>>  offense.
>
>> For something that is free (in the real sense of the word,
>> not as some would have us re-define it), can you really complain
>> if there is no documentation ?
>
> I do. Bad work (and a large package without documentation is bad
> work) is bad work even if it is free. Nobody force people to offer
> their work for free, but if they do they should imho take the critic
> as they take the praise.
>
Who forces you to use someone else's undocumented software? You can
write your own well documented software.
>
> --
> Ulrike Fischer
> http://www.troubleshooting-tex.de/
>
>
>
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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Keith J. Schultz]

Hi Zdenek,

I am perfectly, able to learn what I need to learn. I am perfectly able
to program in almost any programming langauge. TeX is one that I
can directly program in because I simple can grasp its philosophy.

The biggest problem to all this at what is needed is so essential, that
without the proper documentation of what has been the task becomes
absolutely enormous. 

As has been mentioned the source and programming rational behind 
LuaTeX is not documented, at least not publically. Even if one would 
do the programming their is no guarantee that the code will be used or
allowed. 

That is why nobody is willing or can actually step up to bat. Of course one 
could 
always spin off, then … … …

regards
Keith


Am 01.08.2012 um 16:29 schrieb Zdenek Wagner :

> The discussion clarifies what has to be done. It is useless to find a
> person to do a job if you do not know what the job is and what the
> person must know or learn in order to be able to do it.




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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Wed, 1 Aug 2012 17:17:15 +0100 schrieb Philip TAYLOR:

> Keith J. Schultz wrote:
> 
>>  That is probaly teh biggest turn off to LuaTeX.
>>  They should some people in as far as coding is concerned.
>>  The missing documentation is something I would call a cardinal
>>  offense.

> For something that is free (in the real sense of the word,
> not as some would have us re-define it), can you really complain
> if there is no documentation ?  

I do. Bad work (and a large package without documentation is bad
work) is bad work even if it is free. Nobody force people to offer
their work for free, but if they do they should imho take the critic
as they take the praise.


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Zdenek Wagner]

2012/8/1 Arthur Reutenauer :
>   Ha, I was wondering how long it would take for someone to notice :-)
>
>   I just started porting Polyglossia to LuaTeX.  I didn't have time to
> do much yet, but I expect it's going to be a matter of days till all the
> gloss files work.  For the moment, all the languages relying on XeTeX's
> inter-character token mechanism will fail, but I know how to implement
> it in LuaTeX.  It has been discussed several times already and I don't
> expect there will be major problems; although of course it will be
> experimental at first.
>
Whenever anything is available for testing, I can try some Czech and
Slovak texts.

>   What's important to understand, though, is that this does not address
> the underlying issues: LuaTeX still lacks a full OpenType shaping
> engine, so that won't do anything for Indic scripts, scripts from
> South-East Asia, Old Korean, nor other "complex" writing systems.
> Arabic should work fine, but I'm not even sure about Syriac, for
> example.
>
How about Urdu? It will be difficult for me but I can try to run some tests.

>   As for the discussion at hand, I have no intention to participate in
> it -- although I'm afraid I'm going to be dragged into it.  This kind of
> talk is one of the most demotivating phenomena in open source
> development, or in any volunteer community, for that matter.  Having to
> go over hundreds and hundreds of emails in a couple of days, few of
> which seem to focus on concrete issues (when they're not unmitigated
> drivel), just drains any person's enthusiasm and energy -- not to
> mention time.  As Simon Spiegel asked what the reason was for the
> seemingly little progress in the XeTeX world in the past couple of
> years, I can answer for my part: this is it.  This kind of endless
> threads on mailing-lists is the main organic reason why I don't invest
> more time in development, as far as I'm concerned.  And I'm sure this is
> the case for other core developers too.
>
> Arthur
>
>
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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Arthur Reutenauer]

  Ha, I was wondering how long it would take for someone to notice :-)

  I just started porting Polyglossia to LuaTeX.  I didn't have time to
do much yet, but I expect it's going to be a matter of days till all the
gloss files work.  For the moment, all the languages relying on XeTeX's
inter-character token mechanism will fail, but I know how to implement
it in LuaTeX.  It has been discussed several times already and I don't
expect there will be major problems; although of course it will be
experimental at first.

  What's important to understand, though, is that this does not address
the underlying issues: LuaTeX still lacks a full OpenType shaping
engine, so that won't do anything for Indic scripts, scripts from
South-East Asia, Old Korean, nor other "complex" writing systems.
Arabic should work fine, but I'm not even sure about Syriac, for
example.

  As for the discussion at hand, I have no intention to participate in
it -- although I'm afraid I'm going to be dragged into it.  This kind of
talk is one of the most demotivating phenomena in open source
development, or in any volunteer community, for that matter.  Having to
go over hundreds and hundreds of emails in a couple of days, few of
which seem to focus on concrete issues (when they're not unmitigated
drivel), just drains any person's enthusiasm and energy -- not to
mention time.  As Simon Spiegel asked what the reason was for the
seemingly little progress in the XeTeX world in the past couple of
years, I can answer for my part: this is it.  This kind of endless
threads on mailing-lists is the main organic reason why I don't invest
more time in development, as far as I'm concerned.  And I'm sure this is
the case for other core developers too.

Arthur


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Zdenek Wagner]

2012/8/1 Keith J. Schultz :
> Hi Zdenek,
>
> Do you know what a script is? XeTeX uses scripts! The the choice of a glyph
> is governed by a script.! Depending of the Font this is embedded into the Font
> itself or at least should be. Polyglossia offers another way of scripting.
>
> That it why I emphasize the port of Polyglossia to LuaTeX.
> Then Devagari would work for LuaTeX.
>
No!!! Please, before writing this nonsense, read carefully the chapter
on Indic scripts in the Unicode standard and the specification of
Indic OpenType by Microsoft, then read again Polyglossia manual.
Polyglossia has nothing to do with scripts, it deals with languages.
As far as scripts are concerned Polyglossia onbly ensures that the
font selected for a language supports the correct script. Polyglossia
is a replacement for babel. If I type \chapter, it will print Chapter
in English, Kapitola in Czech, अध्याय in Hindi. Devanagari works in
XeTeX even without Polyglossia and will work in luatex if a proper
module for luaotfload is implemented.

> The Developers of LuaTeX have stated openly that the personnally have no
> need for scripting and thereby given a very low-priority.
>
Pragma ADE does not need Indic scripts for their work (personal
message from Hans Hagen approx. a month ago).

> regards
> Keith.
>
> Am 01.08.2012 um 15:54 schrieb Zdenek Wagner :
> [snip, snip]
>> LuaTeX can be considered a flavour of TeX thus if XeTeX can load a
>> font and use the glyphs as they are now and compose them to form a
>> word, I do not understand why a change in the script is needed. LuaTeX
>> is not able to form a word from Devanagari glyphs. MS Office,
>> OpenOffice, modern web browser can do it, so why should we discard the
>> very basics of Indic orthography a create the new one just because
>> nobody has implemented the Indic scripts in lua so far? And discard
>> all Indic fonts and create new ones that will suit the new
>> orthography?
>
>
>
>
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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Philip TAYLOR]

Keith J. Schultz wrote:


That is probaly teh biggest turn off to LuaTeX.
They should some people in as far as coding is concerned.
The missing documentation is something I would call a cardinal
offense.


For something that is free (in the real sense of the word,
not as some would have us re-define it), can you really complain
if there is no documentation ?  If you /buy/ something, you
can reasonably expect it to (a) work, and (b) be complete.
If you choose to use the work of others, and pay them
not a penny for so doing, then you cannot reasonably consider
any errors of omission or of commission "an offence".

Philip Taylor




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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Georg Duffner]

It looks like something is happening there:
https://github.com/reutenauer/polyglossia/commit/45f2cb69b1ea3c388a7888374fff71e7d1a1479a
 Am 01.08.2012 17:55 schrieb "Keith J. Schultz" :

> Hi Zdenek,
>
> Do you know what a script is? XeTeX uses scripts! The the choice of a glyph
> is governed by a script.! Depending of the Font this is embedded into the
> Font
> itself or at least should be. Polyglossia offers another way of scripting.
>
> That it why I emphasize the port of Polyglossia to LuaTeX.
> Then Devagari would work for LuaTeX.
>
> The Developers of LuaTeX have stated openly that the personnally have no
> need for scripting and thereby given a very low-priority.
>
> regards
> Keith.
>
> Am 01.08.2012 um 15:54 schrieb Zdenek Wagner :
> [snip, snip]
> > LuaTeX can be considered a flavour of TeX thus if XeTeX can load a
> > font and use the glyphs as they are now and compose them to form a
> > word, I do not understand why a change in the script is needed. LuaTeX
> > is not able to form a word from Devanagari glyphs. MS Office,
> > OpenOffice, modern web browser can do it, so why should we discard the
> > very basics of Indic orthography a create the new one just because
> > nobody has implemented the Indic scripts in lua so far? And discard
> > all Indic fonts and create new ones that will suit the new
> > orthography?
>
>
>
>
> --
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>


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Wed, 1 Aug 2012 17:54:25 +0200 schrieb Keith J. Schultz:


> That it why I emphasize the port of Polyglossia to LuaTeX.
> Then Devagari would work for LuaTeX.

I doubt this very much. The problem as far as I understood it is the
handling of the font itself. If the problem would lie only in some
code of polyglossia then even I with my rather small knowlegdes
about devangari could implement it for luatex. 

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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Philip TAYLOR]

Ulrike Fischer wrote:


Perhaps (the discussion is rather long). But you obviously don't
accept my conclusion that one possible solution is to reduce the
complexity of the script. You are only looking for the people who
should write all this complex code.


Ulrike, Ulrike, you are normally so clear thinking :
how can you reasonably advocate that a nation (worse,
a group of nations) should re-think their orthography
in order to pander to the needs of a minority-interest
typesetting system.  Would you also suggest that the Chinese
whittle down the number of hanzi from 50 000 to 256, so
that they can all be handled in a single 8-bit font ?

** Phil.


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[mskala]

On Wed, 1 Aug 2012, Zdenek Wagner wrote:
> > That is the line of thinking that would favour Graphite (a general system
> > for defining complex scripts inside fonts) over OpenType (which requires

> That's right but we still have a lot of non-Graphite fonts.

We also don't have much enthusiasm, as far as I can see, for emphasizing
Graphite to the *exclusion* of other systems, in particular OpenType, as
the preferred way for TeX engines to solve this issue.  And that's what it
would take.  I think we're back to the question raised earlier:  are we
trying to build a really new thing, accepting the cost of throwing out and
reinventing technology that already exists and works; or are we trying to
build a thing that works with existing technology, accepting the cost that
some of that existing technology isn't ideal?
-- 
Matthew Skala
msk...@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca People before principles.
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Keith J. Schultz]

Hi Zdenek,

Do you know what a script is? XeTeX uses scripts! The the choice of a glyph
is governed by a script.! Depending of the Font this is embedded into the Font
itself or at least should be. Polyglossia offers another way of scripting.

That it why I emphasize the port of Polyglossia to LuaTeX.
Then Devagari would work for LuaTeX.

The Developers of LuaTeX have stated openly that the personnally have no
need for scripting and thereby given a very low-priority.

regards
Keith.

Am 01.08.2012 um 15:54 schrieb Zdenek Wagner :
[snip, snip]
> LuaTeX can be considered a flavour of TeX thus if XeTeX can load a
> font and use the glyphs as they are now and compose them to form a
> word, I do not understand why a change in the script is needed. LuaTeX
> is not able to form a word from Devanagari glyphs. MS Office,
> OpenOffice, modern web browser can do it, so why should we discard the
> very basics of Indic orthography a create the new one just because
> nobody has implemented the Indic scripts in lua so far? And discard
> all Indic fonts and create new ones that will suit the new
> orthography?




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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Zdenek Wagner]

2012/8/1 Keith J. Schultz :
> Hi Zdenek,
>
> Am 01.08.2012 um 13:22 schrieb Zdenek Wagner :
>
>> 2012/8/1 Ulrike Fischer :
>>> Am Wed, 1 Aug 2012 12:30:52 +0200 schrieb Zdenek Wagner:
>>>
>>> Well you only confirm my impression: That quite a lot of scripts
>>> never felt the pressure put on us by the movable type printing.
>>> Western glyphs used in prints were greatly influenced by the
>>> technical possibilities and were adapted to what was possible. For
>>> me the idea that a printed document should look like "handwritten"
>>> is curious.
>>>
>> I do not state that it should look as handwritten but at least the
>> glyohs should have correct order and shape that is not too much
>> different (even in handwriting Devanagari has variants). With the
>> current version of luatex the correct order of glyphs cannot be
>> acheved. If I copy&past a text from Hindi Wikipedia and typeset it in
>> XeTeX, the result will be OK. If I do the same in luatex, the result
>> will be garbage.
> Why, because the language script is not support in LuaTeX!!
>
That's what I have already written. For people depending on such
scripts and languages switching to luatex is no option today.
>
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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Zdenek Wagner]

2012/8/1  :
> On Wed, 1 Aug 2012, Ulrike Fischer wrote:
>> Perhaps (the discussion is rather long). But you obviously don't
>> accept my conclusion that one possible solution is to reduce the
>> complexity of the script. You are only looking for the people who
>> should write all this complex code.
>
> Language is inherently political, and telling people to change their
> language to suit the computer is really asking for trouble.
>
> However, something that might fly better and addresses similar issues
> would be to say:  requiring the typesetting system to build in per-script
> support is a losing game because it requires the builders of the
> typesetting system (who will be experts on computing, not on ALL the
> scripts of the world) to learn ALL the scripts of the world.  It's also a
> political problem because some scripts, or some forms of some scripts,
> inevitably won't make the list of "all" scripts and will be
> disenfranchised as a result.  So:  this per-script knowledge should be
> moved from the typesetting system to the font, and then it becomes the
> responsibility of the font designers who more reasonably can be expected
> to be experts on their own scripts, and then nobody needs to be an expert
> on ALL scripts, and unforeseen scripts can be easily added just by
> creating new fonts.
>
> That is the line of thinking that would favour Graphite (a general system
> for defining complex scripts inside fonts) over OpenType (which requires
> each script to be defined in the typesetting system, outside of the font),
> and it should be acceptable both to people who want the technology to be
> easy to build and to people who want the output to look right.
>
That's right but we still have a lot of non-Graphite fonts.
> --
> Matthew Skala
> msk...@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca People before principles.
> http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/
>
>
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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Keith J. Schultz]

Hi Zdenek,

Am 01.08.2012 um 13:22 schrieb Zdenek Wagner :

> 2012/8/1 Ulrike Fischer :
>> Am Wed, 1 Aug 2012 12:30:52 +0200 schrieb Zdenek Wagner:
>> 
>> Well you only confirm my impression: That quite a lot of scripts
>> never felt the pressure put on us by the movable type printing.
>> Western glyphs used in prints were greatly influenced by the
>> technical possibilities and were adapted to what was possible. For
>> me the idea that a printed document should look like "handwritten"
>> is curious.
>> 
> I do not state that it should look as handwritten but at least the
> glyohs should have correct order and shape that is not too much
> different (even in handwriting Devanagari has variants). With the
> current version of luatex the correct order of glyphs cannot be
> acheved. If I copy&past a text from Hindi Wikipedia and typeset it in
> XeTeX, the result will be OK. If I do the same in luatex, the result
> will be garbage.
Why, because the language script is not support in LuaTeX!!


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[mskala]

On Wed, 1 Aug 2012, Ulrike Fischer wrote:
> Perhaps (the discussion is rather long). But you obviously don't
> accept my conclusion that one possible solution is to reduce the
> complexity of the script. You are only looking for the people who
> should write all this complex code.

Language is inherently political, and telling people to change their
language to suit the computer is really asking for trouble.

However, something that might fly better and addresses similar issues
would be to say:  requiring the typesetting system to build in per-script
support is a losing game because it requires the builders of the
typesetting system (who will be experts on computing, not on ALL the
scripts of the world) to learn ALL the scripts of the world.  It's also a
political problem because some scripts, or some forms of some scripts,
inevitably won't make the list of "all" scripts and will be
disenfranchised as a result.  So:  this per-script knowledge should be
moved from the typesetting system to the font, and then it becomes the
responsibility of the font designers who more reasonably can be expected
to be experts on their own scripts, and then nobody needs to be an expert
on ALL scripts, and unforeseen scripts can be easily added just by
creating new fonts.

That is the line of thinking that would favour Graphite (a general system
for defining complex scripts inside fonts) over OpenType (which requires
each script to be defined in the typesetting system, outside of the font),
and it should be acceptable both to people who want the technology to be
easy to build and to people who want the output to look right.

-- 
Matthew Skala
msk...@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca People before principles.
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Zdenek Wagner]

2012/8/1 Zdenek Wagner :
> 2012/8/1 Ulrike Fischer :
>> Am Wed, 1 Aug 2012 16:59:55 +0200 schrieb Zdenek Wagner:
>>
 I didn't say that "a change is needed", only that the complexity of
 some scripts are part of the problem: complex scripts means complex
 code and people who write, test, maintain, extend this code. And
 such people are not always available like now in the case of luatex.
>>
>>> That's exactly what I wrote (in slightly different words) at the very
>>> beginning of the discussion.
>>
>> Perhaps (the discussion is rather long). But you obviously don't
>> accept my conclusion that one possible solution is to reduce the
>> complexity of the script. You are only looking for the people who
>> should write all this complex code.
>>

!cibarA ot tebaphla nitaL eth tpada ot decrof erew ew fi neppah dlouw
tahw enigami dnA


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Keith J. Schultz]

Hi Ulrike,

Am 01.08.2012 um 12:13 schrieb Ulrike Fischer :

> Am Wed, 1 Aug 2012 09:32:16 +0200 schrieb Keith J. Schultz:
> 
>> From the simple user side. LuaTeX is about as easy as it gets. For
>> most purpose I can teach you all you need to know how to use Lua
>> for TeX in 2 hours!
> 
> The problem are the people inbetween: The people who should develop
> the code needed on top of the binary. As you could see in this
> discussion the core problem currently is the handling of (open type)
> fonts. And while the fontloader lua code in context (the source of
> luaotfload) is quite advanced, it is undocumentated, has no sensible
> api, and can change all the time in unexpected ways. Nobody outside
> the context team can actually work on it and e.g add support for
> scripts or correct bugs. 
That is probaly teh biggest turn off to LuaTeX.
They should some people in as far as coding is concerned.
The missing documentation is something I would call a cardinal
offense. 
> (As an aside I think that one should not only put pressure on
> xetex/luatex/open type engines to support all sorts of open type
> features and scripts but also on some scripts to adapt a bit to the
> computer age.) 
You have my vote, though I do not need them. Ignorance of
the need for scripts or advance is one of the reasons we are
in the TeX-mess we have. Knuth can no be blamed. Back then
you programmed differently. Today, everything should be
modular and extensible. 
> 
> 
> 
>> It's price for unicode support and using fontspec. But,
>> those ancient packages using encodings should be a thing of the
>> past, IMHO.
> 
> Well in case of chess fonts they are not "a thing of the past". Not
> because of some deficiency of luatex or xetex but because most
> glyphs used e.g. by chessboards are not in unicode. You need some
> local encoding to access them in a standarized way, and this means
> you need the ability to reencode fonts. This should be possible with
> luatex (and is in my eyes one of the advantage compared to xetex)
> but can't be used due to the unclear state of the font loader.
Please, do not get me wrong. I am not talking about the fonts!
Just that if there is no necessity not to use unicode, unicode should
used.

Grüß
Keith






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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Zdenek Wagner]

2012/8/1 Ulrike Fischer :
> Am Wed, 1 Aug 2012 16:59:55 +0200 schrieb Zdenek Wagner:
>
>>> I didn't say that "a change is needed", only that the complexity of
>>> some scripts are part of the problem: complex scripts means complex
>>> code and people who write, test, maintain, extend this code. And
>>> such people are not always available like now in the case of luatex.
>
>> That's exactly what I wrote (in slightly different words) at the very
>> beginning of the discussion.
>
> Perhaps (the discussion is rather long). But you obviously don't
> accept my conclusion that one possible solution is to reduce the
> complexity of the script. You are only looking for the people who
> should write all this complex code.
>
OK. Look at my example from the previous post, compare the xetex
(correct) and luatex (incorrect) output and suggest a simplification
of the script so that it does not depart too much from current
practice. Than persuade Microsoft to rewrite the Indic OpenType
specification and Uniscribe and persuade all font vendors to redesign
all Indic font according to the new specification. Do you think it is
achievable?

(I can type the same text in MS Word, in OpenOffice, put it on the
web, process it by good FO processor, the output will be correct, only
luatex cannot do it.)
>
> --
> Ulrike Fischer
> http://www.troubleshooting-tex.de/
>
>
>
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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Wed, 1 Aug 2012 16:59:55 +0200 schrieb Zdenek Wagner:

>> I didn't say that "a change is needed", only that the complexity of
>> some scripts are part of the problem: complex scripts means complex
>> code and people who write, test, maintain, extend this code. And
>> such people are not always available like now in the case of luatex.

> That's exactly what I wrote (in slightly different words) at the very
> beginning of the discussion.

Perhaps (the discussion is rather long). But you obviously don't
accept my conclusion that one possible solution is to reduce the
complexity of the script. You are only looking for the people who
should write all this complex code. 


-- 
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http://www.troubleshooting-tex.de/



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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Zdenek Wagner]

2012/8/1 Ulrike Fischer :
> Am Wed, 1 Aug 2012 15:54:37 +0200 schrieb Zdenek Wagner:
>
>> LuaTeX can be considered a flavour of TeX thus if XeTeX can load a
>> font and use the glyphs as they are now and compose them to form a
>> word, I do not understand why a change in the script is needed. LuaTeX
>> is not able to form a word from Devanagari glyphs. MS Office,
>> OpenOffice, modern web browser can do it, so why should we discard the
>> very basics of Indic orthography a create the new one just because
>> nobody has implemented the Indic scripts in lua so far? And discard
>> all Indic fonts and create new ones that will suit the new
>> orthography?
>
> I didn't say that "a change is needed", only that the complexity of
> some scripts are part of the problem: complex scripts means complex
> code and people who write, test, maintain, extend this code. And
> such people are not always available like now in the case of luatex.
>
That's exactly what I wrote (in slightly different words) at the very
beginning of the discussion.
>
>
> --
> Ulrike Fischer
> http://www.troubleshooting-tex.de/
>
>
>
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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Philip TAYLOR]

msk...@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca wrote:


The question is whether the machine or the human being should be master.


I see no question.  And I do not think that Zen masters or
master calligraphers would, either.  It is only those for
whom "it must compute" is a mantra that could conceivably
believe otherwise.  IMHO, of course.

** Phil.


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Zdenek Wagner]

2012/8/1 Yves Codet :
> Hello.
>
> Around here there are some Indian people whose language uses Devanagari (but 
> there would be similar issues with other scripts), and some Sanskrit and 
> Hindi scholars as well. I wonder how many would accept to read what is below 
> (produced by LuaLaTeX), instead of किमिति.
>
> Best wishes,
>
I have a somewhat larger comparison. Only the first word is right, the
remaining words contain at least one error. I admit that I know the
luatex deficiencies and selected a special list of words but all of
them are frequent Hindi words. It will be similar in other languages
of India. Tibetan may be even worse.

> Yves
>
>
> Le 1 août 2012 à 15:54, Zdenek Wagner a écrit :
>
>> 2012/8/1 Ulrike Fischer :
>>> Am Wed, 1 Aug 2012 11:58:31 +0100 schrieb Philip TAYLOR:
>>>
> Well you only confirm my impression: That quite a lot of scripts
> never felt the pressure put on us by the movable type printing.
>>>
 Is that not good ?  Would Chinese calligraphy look anywhere near
 as beautiful if its glyph forms had been forcibly coerced into
 meeting the constraints imposed by movable type printing ?
>>>
>>> Sure, but people who not only want to look at glyphs and admire
>>> their beauty but also use them to communicate through print,
>>> websites, mail, twitter, sms ... musst accept that technical
>>> restrictions and problems musst be taken into accout too.
>>>
>>> Scripts have always been shaped by the material (you only need to
>>> look at Cuneiform). And when you switch the material and tool used
>>> to write e.g. from clay to paper or to computer this will always
>>> have an impact back on the script.
>>>
>> LuaTeX can be considered a flavour of TeX thus if XeTeX can load a
>> font and use the glyphs as they are now and compose them to form a
>> word, I do not understand why a change in the script is needed. LuaTeX
>> is not able to form a word from Devanagari glyphs. MS Office,
>> OpenOffice, modern web browser can do it, so why should we discard the
>> very basics of Indic orthography a create the new one just because
>> nobody has implemented the Indic scripts in lua so far? And discard
>> all Indic fonts and create new ones that will suit the new
>> orthography?
>>
>>> --
>>> Ulrike Fischer
>>> http://www.troubleshooting-tex.de/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Subscriptions, Archive, and List information, etc.:
>>>  http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Zdeněk Wagner
>> http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
>> http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz
>>
>>
>>
>> --
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>>  http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex
>
>
>
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xelatex.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document


lualatex.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Wed, 1 Aug 2012 15:54:37 +0200 schrieb Zdenek Wagner:

> LuaTeX can be considered a flavour of TeX thus if XeTeX can load a
> font and use the glyphs as they are now and compose them to form a
> word, I do not understand why a change in the script is needed. LuaTeX
> is not able to form a word from Devanagari glyphs. MS Office,
> OpenOffice, modern web browser can do it, so why should we discard the
> very basics of Indic orthography a create the new one just because
> nobody has implemented the Indic scripts in lua so far? And discard
> all Indic fonts and create new ones that will suit the new
> orthography?

I didn't say that "a change is needed", only that the complexity of
some scripts are part of the problem: complex scripts means complex
code and people who write, test, maintain, extend this code. And
such people are not always available like now in the case of luatex. 



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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Zdenek Wagner]

2012/8/1 Philip TAYLOR :
>
>
> Simon Spiegel wrote:
>
>> I guess it is of little or no concern if you're not interested in
>> actually getting something done. As a user I'm much more interested
>> in how I can get working tools.
>
>
> Then you probably use LaTeX and packages.  I use plain TeX, because
> I am just as interested in solving the problems as I am in achieving
> the typeset output.
>
I would be happy to use lualatex package for Devanagari if such a
package existed...

> Philip Taylor
>
>
>
>
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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Yves Codet]

Hello.

Around here there are some Indian people whose language uses Devanagari (but 
there would be similar issues with other scripts), and some Sanskrit and Hindi 
scholars as well. I wonder how many would accept to read what is below 
(produced by LuaLaTeX), instead of किमिति.

Best wishes,

Yves


PastedGraphic-1.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document

Le 1 août 2012 à 15:54, Zdenek Wagner a écrit :

> 2012/8/1 Ulrike Fischer :
>> Am Wed, 1 Aug 2012 11:58:31 +0100 schrieb Philip TAYLOR:
>> 
 Well you only confirm my impression: That quite a lot of scripts
 never felt the pressure put on us by the movable type printing.
>> 
>>> Is that not good ?  Would Chinese calligraphy look anywhere near
>>> as beautiful if its glyph forms had been forcibly coerced into
>>> meeting the constraints imposed by movable type printing ?
>> 
>> Sure, but people who not only want to look at glyphs and admire
>> their beauty but also use them to communicate through print,
>> websites, mail, twitter, sms ... musst accept that technical
>> restrictions and problems musst be taken into accout too.
>> 
>> Scripts have always been shaped by the material (you only need to
>> look at Cuneiform). And when you switch the material and tool used
>> to write e.g. from clay to paper or to computer this will always
>> have an impact back on the script.
>> 
> LuaTeX can be considered a flavour of TeX thus if XeTeX can load a
> font and use the glyphs as they are now and compose them to form a
> word, I do not understand why a change in the script is needed. LuaTeX
> is not able to form a word from Devanagari glyphs. MS Office,
> OpenOffice, modern web browser can do it, so why should we discard the
> very basics of Indic orthography a create the new one just because
> nobody has implemented the Indic scripts in lua so far? And discard
> all Indic fonts and create new ones that will suit the new
> orthography?
> 
>> --
>> Ulrike Fischer
>> http://www.troubleshooting-tex.de/
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> Subscriptions, Archive, and List information, etc.:
>>  http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Zdeněk Wagner
> http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
> http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz
> 
> 
> 
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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Zdenek Wagner]

2012/8/1 Simon Spiegel :
>
> On 01.08.2012, at 15:45, Philip TAYLOR  wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Simon Spiegel wrote:
>>
>> > And it might be a good idea to come up with ideas how we can find this 
>> > someone.
>>
>> "ideas how we can ..." involves discussion, unless you are
>> advocating implementation by fiat, which I am sure you are
>> not.  So what it would seem you are advocating is that we
>> cease technical discussions and move on to personnel
>> discussions -- well, I for one am perfectly happy to leave
>> the personnel discussion to you and to others : technicalities,
>> problems and potential solutions interest me enormously,
>> and I am happy to continue to debate those; "who does what"
>> is a matter of little or no concern,
>
> I guess it is of little or no concern if you're not interested in actually 
> getting something done. As a user I'm much more interested in how I can get 
> working tools.
>
> But since I'm not interested in proving my own point - that discussions on 
> the future of *TeX tend to drift somewhere where things don't get done -, I'm 
> stopping this here.
>
The discussion clarifies what has to be done. It is useless to find a
person to do a job if you do not know what the job is and what the
person must know or learn in order to be able to do it.

> Simon
>
>
> --
> Simon Spiegel
> Steinhaldenstr. 50
> 8002 Zürich
>
> Telephon: ++41 44 451 5334
> Mobophon: ++41 76 459 6039
>
> http://www.simifilm.ch
>
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>
>
>
>
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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Philip TAYLOR]

Simon Spiegel wrote:


I guess it is of little or no concern if you're not interested in
actually getting something done. As a user I'm much more interested
in how I can get working tools.


Then you probably use LaTeX and packages.  I use plain TeX, because
I am just as interested in solving the problems as I am in achieving
the typeset output.

Philip Taylor



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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Simon Spiegel]

On 01.08.2012, at 15:45, Philip TAYLOR  wrote:

> 
> 
> Simon Spiegel wrote:
> 
> > And it might be a good idea to come up with ideas how we can find this 
> > someone.
> 
> "ideas how we can ..." involves discussion, unless you are
> advocating implementation by fiat, which I am sure you are
> not.  So what it would seem you are advocating is that we
> cease technical discussions and move on to personnel
> discussions -- well, I for one am perfectly happy to leave
> the personnel discussion to you and to others : technicalities,
> problems and potential solutions interest me enormously,
> and I am happy to continue to debate those; "who does what"
> is a matter of little or no concern,

I guess it is of little or no concern if you're not interested in actually 
getting something done. As a user I'm much more interested in how I can get 
working tools.

But since I'm not interested in proving my own point – that discussions on the 
future of *TeX tend to drift somewhere where things don't get done –, I'm 
stopping this here.

Simon


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Zdenek Wagner]

2012/8/1 Ulrike Fischer :
> Am Wed, 1 Aug 2012 11:58:31 +0100 schrieb Philip TAYLOR:
>
>>> Well you only confirm my impression: That quite a lot of scripts
>>> never felt the pressure put on us by the movable type printing.
>
>> Is that not good ?  Would Chinese calligraphy look anywhere near
>> as beautiful if its glyph forms had been forcibly coerced into
>> meeting the constraints imposed by movable type printing ?
>
> Sure, but people who not only want to look at glyphs and admire
> their beauty but also use them to communicate through print,
> websites, mail, twitter, sms ... musst accept that technical
> restrictions and problems musst be taken into accout too.
>
> Scripts have always been shaped by the material (you only need to
> look at Cuneiform). And when you switch the material and tool used
> to write e.g. from clay to paper or to computer this will always
> have an impact back on the script.
>
LuaTeX can be considered a flavour of TeX thus if XeTeX can load a
font and use the glyphs as they are now and compose them to form a
word, I do not understand why a change in the script is needed. LuaTeX
is not able to form a word from Devanagari glyphs. MS Office,
OpenOffice, modern web browser can do it, so why should we discard the
very basics of Indic orthography a create the new one just because
nobody has implemented the Indic scripts in lua so far? And discard
all Indic fonts and create new ones that will suit the new
orthography?

> --
> Ulrike Fischer
> http://www.troubleshooting-tex.de/
>
>
>
> --
> Subscriptions, Archive, and List information, etc.:
>   http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex



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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Philip TAYLOR]

Simon Spiegel wrote:

> And it might be a good idea to come up with ideas how we can find 
this someone.


"ideas how we can ..." involves discussion, unless you are
advocating implementation by fiat, which I am sure you are
not.  So what it would seem you are advocating is that we
cease technical discussions and move on to personnel
discussions -- well, I for one am perfectly happy to leave
the personnel discussion to you and to others : technicalities,
problems and potential solutions interest me enormously,
and I am happy to continue to debate those; "who does what"
is a matter of little or no concern, so I leave that aspect
entirely to you and to others.

Philip Taylor
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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Dominik Wujastyk]

Dear Adrian,

We shouldn't forget the quiet statement by Khaled
Hosny,
earlier in this discussion, that he is "tentatively" maintaining XeTeX,
with funding from TUG and Jonathan's oversight.  In my view this is all
good, and gives me confidence to go on using XeTeX for serious, long-term
projects.

Best,
Dominik

On 31 July 2012 22:14, Adrian Burd  wrote:

>
> So, as a simple ol' (stress on the simple, well, maybe the old as well)
> XeTeX/XeLaTeX user I have 2 questions for the gurus and cognoscenti in the
> group.
>
> Is XeLaTeX/XeTex currently supported within the community? If not, is
> there a good chance that it will go away/become incompatible/unusable in
> the future (near or otherwise)?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Adrian
>
>
>
>
>
>
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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Wed, 1 Aug 2012 11:58:31 +0100 schrieb Philip TAYLOR:

>> Well you only confirm my impression: That quite a lot of scripts
>> never felt the pressure put on us by the movable type printing.
 
> Is that not good ?  Would Chinese calligraphy look anywhere near
> as beautiful if its glyph forms had been forcibly coerced into
> meeting the constraints imposed by movable type printing ?

Sure, but people who not only want to look at glyphs and admire
their beauty but also use them to communicate through print,
websites, mail, twitter, sms ... musst accept that technical
restrictions and problems musst be taken into accout too. 

Scripts have always been shaped by the material (you only need to
look at Cuneiform). And when you switch the material and tool used
to write e.g. from clay to paper or to computer this will always
have an impact back on the script. 

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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Simon Spiegel]

On 01.08.2012, at 15:10, Philip TAYLOR  wrote:

> 
> 
> Simon Spiegel wrote:
> 
>>> From: Zdenek Wagner 
> 
>>> There was a problem with polyglossia because Fran?oise Charette
>>> left academia and no longer had time to maintain it. The current
>>> maintainer is Arthur Reutenauer. I hope that a few volunteers could
>>> help him. Microtypography is not just a matter of the microtype
>>> package, the internals must offer proper primitives. I do not know
>>> whether they are already available. It is not easy in some scripts,
>>> eg in Indic scripts due to glyph reordering.
>> 
>> Maybe it was a mistake to come up with examples, but this is exactly
>> the kind of answer I wasn't looking for. There is always a perfectly
>> valid reason why people stop working on a project or why something
>> doesn't get been developed. After all, we're mainly talking about
>> people doing this as an unpaid hobby. No one can't be blamed if he
>> decides that wants to spend his spare time in a different manner.
> 
> I am sorry, but I profoundly disagree.  It is /vital/ that people
> considering undertaking the work are aware of already known
> difficulties that they may/will encounter; to ask them to start
> work blindly, without a good state-of-the-art appraisal of
> difficulties already known or foreseen, is extremely unreasonable
> (IMHO, of course).  There is a time for debate, and a time
> for action, but except in situations involving life-and-death,
> intelligent and informed debate preceding action is almost always
> a good thing.

Let me put it this way: The reason why many of the shortcomings of TeX et al. 
haven't been dealt with yet, is certainly not because there wasn't enough 
discussion. And to be perfectly clear: I'm not saying that discussions prevent 
that things get done. And I certainly didn't suggest that someone should "start 
work blindly". I'm just saying that nothing will happen if there isn't someone 
who makes it happen and no discussion can get around this. And it might be a 
good idea to come up with ideas how we can find this someone.

Simon
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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Adam Twardoch (List)]

> Martin Schröder wrote:
>> And JS isn't designed for embedding
Interesting. I must admit that so far, I've *only* used JavaScript as an
embedded language -- starting with every web browser, plus most Adobe
applications, OpenOffice, as well pretty much all of Microsoft Office
applications (through Active Scripting).

There is a quite large number of JavaScript VMs available, and as far as
I can tell, all of them were specifically developed with embedding in mind.

A.

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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Philip TAYLOR]

Simon Spiegel wrote:


From: Zdenek Wagner 



There was a problem with polyglossia because Fran?oise Charette
left academia and no longer had time to maintain it. The current
maintainer is Arthur Reutenauer. I hope that a few volunteers could
help him. Microtypography is not just a matter of the microtype
package, the internals must offer proper primitives. I do not know
whether they are already available. It is not easy in some scripts,
eg in Indic scripts due to glyph reordering.


Maybe it was a mistake to come up with examples, but this is exactly
the kind of answer I wasn't looking for. There is always a perfectly
valid reason why people stop working on a project or why something
doesn't get been developed. After all, we're mainly talking about
people doing this as an unpaid hobby. No one can't be blamed if he
decides that wants to spend his spare time in a different manner.


I am sorry, but I profoundly disagree.  It is /vital/ that people
considering undertaking the work are aware of already known
difficulties that they may/will encounter; to ask them to start
work blindly, without a good state-of-the-art appraisal of
difficulties already known or foreseen, is extremely unreasonable
(IMHO, of course).  There is a time for debate, and a time
for action, but except in situations involving life-and-death,
intelligent and informed debate preceding action is almost always
a good thing.

Philip Taylor


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Simon Spiegel]

> 
> Message: 5
> Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2012 14:47:50 +0200
> From: Zdenek Wagner 
> To: Unicode-based TeX for Mac OS X and other platforms 
> Subject: Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX
> Message-ID:
>   
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-2"
> 
> 2012/8/1 Simon Spiegel :
>> Some comments from a long time lurker here on this mailing list: I've been 
>> following this discussion with great interest but unfortunately it follows 
>> the same pattern of many similar discussions in the past. The question on 
>> how things could be improved is soon split up into various, often very 
>> technical, subdiscussions. Those are often very interesting, but IMO they 
>> avoid the main point which should be dealt with.
>> 
>> I don't intend to criticize anybody and maybe I'm stating the super obvious, 
>> but all these discussions are moot unless some is actually willing and able 
>> to come up and do some coding.
>> 
>> The subject of polyglossia has been brought up. I guess we all agree that 
>> polyglossia for LuaLaTeX would be a good thing. There also seems to be a 
>> consensus that this is technically doable. But this has already been 
>> discussed three years ago at least. AFAICS nothing much has happened so far. 
>> Similar with microtype for XeTeX. Until I'm mistaken we still only have 
>> parts of microtype implemented for XeTeX and only in a beta version of 
>> microtype. Again I hear that this should be doable for XeTeX but nothing has 
>> happened so far.
>> 
> There was a problem with polyglossia because Fran?oise Charette left
> academia and no longer had time to maintain it. The current maintainer
> is Arthur Reutenauer. I hope that a few volunteers could help him.
> Microtypography is not just a matter of the microtype package, the
> internals must offer proper primitives. I do not know whether they are
> already available. It is not easy in some scripts, eg in Indic scripts
> due to glyph reordering.

Maybe it was a mistake to come up with examples, but this is exactly the kind 
of answer I wasn't looking for. There is always a perfectly valid reason why 
people stop working on a project or why something doesn't get been developed. 
After all, we're mainly talking about people doing this as an unpaid hobby. No 
one can't be blamed if he decides that wants to spend his spare time in a 
different manner.

> 
>> I may have missed some posts, but so far I've only seen Simon Cozens 
>> offering to actually work on improving the situation.
>> 
>> As I said, I don't want to criticize anybody for not coming up with working 
>> solutions. No one can be blamed if these things don't get done. But I really 
>> believe that we had enough of theoretical discussions in the past on how 
>> things could be done. What we need is people doing it. I think this kind of 
>> discussion should mainly be concerned with the question on how we can create 
>> a situation where people actually can deliver solutions. Is it a question of 
>> money? Would something like a kickstarter campaign help in finding people 
>> who can come up with the needed code? Personally, I'd be more than willing 
>> to pledge some code for this. Or is it a question of lack of knowledge (too 
>> few people are actually competent enough). Or is it something else?
>> 
> In the past TeX users groups financially supported several projects
> (Latin Modern, TeX Gyre, mplib). I believe that money can be found for
> future projects as well. It is necessary to find someone who will
> actually do the job. Maybe some PhD student can do it, I do not
> know...

IMO we should really try to come up with ideas how we can find people who are 
willing and able to do this, be they PhD students or whatever. And if there are 
people interested in doing something, we should try to support them – be it 
financially, with knowhow or what else they may need.

Simon

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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[mskala]

On Wed, 1 Aug 2012, Philip TAYLOR wrote:
> Is that not good ?  Would Chinese calligraphy look anywhere near
> as beautiful if its glyph forms had been forcibly coerced into
> meeting the constraints imposed by movable type printing ?

The question is whether the machine or the human being should be master.

-- 
Matthew Skala
msk...@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca People before principles.
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Zdenek Wagner]

2012/8/1 Simon Spiegel :
> Some comments from a long time lurker here on this mailing list: I've been 
> following this discussion with great interest but unfortunately it follows 
> the same pattern of many similar discussions in the past. The question on how 
> things could be improved is soon split up into various, often very technical, 
> subdiscussions. Those are often very interesting, but IMO they avoid the main 
> point which should be dealt with.
>
> I don't intend to criticize anybody and maybe I'm stating the super obvious, 
> but all these discussions are moot unless some is actually willing and able 
> to come up and do some coding.
>
> The subject of polyglossia has been brought up. I guess we all agree that 
> polyglossia for LuaLaTeX would be a good thing. There also seems to be a 
> consensus that this is technically doable. But this has already been 
> discussed three years ago at least. AFAICS nothing much has happened so far. 
> Similar with microtype for XeTeX. Until I'm mistaken we still only have parts 
> of microtype implemented for XeTeX and only in a beta version of microtype. 
> Again I hear that this should be doable for XeTeX but nothing has happened so 
> far.
>
There was a problem with polyglossia because Françoise Charette left
academia and no longer had time to maintain it. The current maintainer
is Arthur Reutenauer. I hope that a few volunteers could help him.
Microtypography is not just a matter of the microtype package, the
internals must offer proper primitives. I do not know whether they are
already available. It is not easy in some scripts, eg in Indic scripts
due to glyph reordering.

> I may have missed some posts, but so far I've only seen Simon Cozens offering 
> to actually work on improving the situation.
>
> As I said, I don't want to criticize anybody for not coming up with working 
> solutions. No one can be blamed if these things don't get done. But I really 
> believe that we had enough of theoretical discussions in the past on how 
> things could be done. What we need is people doing it. I think this kind of 
> discussion should mainly be concerned with the question on how we can create 
> a situation where people actually can deliver solutions. Is it a question of 
> money? Would something like a kickstarter campaign help in finding people who 
> can come up with the needed code? Personally, I'd be more than willing to 
> pledge some code for this. Or is it a question of lack of knowledge (too few 
> people are actually competent enough). Or is it something else?
>
In the past TeX users groups financially supported several projects
(Latin Modern, TeX Gyre, mplib). I believe that money can be found for
future projects as well. It is necessary to find someone who will
actually do the job. Maybe some PhD student can do it, I do not
know...

As I wrote (probably privately), I have test files that were used for
testing Devanagari in GNU FreeFont. They could be useful if someone
decides to implement Devanagari in luatex, I can help with testing but
not with development.

> Simon
>
>
> --
> Simon Spiegel
> Steinhaldenstr. 50
> 8002 Zürich
>
> Telephon: ++41 44 451 5334
> Mobophon: ++41 76 459 6039
>
>
> http://www.simifilm.ch
>
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>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Philip TAYLOR]

Ulrike Fischer wrote:


Well you only confirm my impression: That quite a lot of scripts
never felt the pressure put on us by the movable type printing.


Is that not good ?  Would Chinese calligraphy look anywhere near
as beautiful if its glyph forms had been forcibly coerced into
meeting the constraints imposed by movable type printing ?

** Phil.


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Simon Spiegel]

Some comments from a long time lurker here on this mailing list: I've been 
following this discussion with great interest but unfortunately it follows the 
same pattern of many similar discussions in the past. The question on how 
things could be improved is soon split up into various, often very technical, 
subdiscussions. Those are often very interesting, but IMO they avoid the main 
point which should be dealt with.

I don't intend to criticize anybody and maybe I'm stating the super obvious, 
but all these discussions are moot unless some is actually willing and able to 
come up and do some coding.

The subject of polyglossia has been brought up. I guess we all agree that 
polyglossia for LuaLaTeX would be a good thing. There also seems to be a 
consensus that this is technically doable. But this has already been discussed 
three years ago at least. AFAICS nothing much has happened so far. Similar with 
microtype for XeTeX. Until I'm mistaken we still only have parts of microtype 
implemented for XeTeX and only in a beta version of microtype. Again I hear 
that this should be doable for XeTeX but nothing has happened so far.

I may have missed some posts, but so far I've only seen Simon Cozens offering 
to actually work on improving the situation. 

As I said, I don't want to criticize anybody for not coming up with working 
solutions. No one can be blamed if these things don't get done. But I really 
believe that we had enough of theoretical discussions in the past on how things 
could be done. What we need is people doing it. I think this kind of discussion 
should mainly be concerned with the question on how we can create a situation 
where people actually can deliver solutions. Is it a question of money? Would 
something like a kickstarter campaign help in finding people who can come up 
with the needed code? Personally, I'd be more than willing to pledge some code 
for this. Or is it a question of lack of knowledge (too few people are actually 
competent enough). Or is it something else?

Simon


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8002 Zürich

Telephon: ++41 44 451 5334
Mobophon: ++41 76 459 6039


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Zdenek Wagner]

2012/8/1 BPJ :
> On 2012-08-01 01:48, Arthur Reutenauer wrote:
>
>>>   How does this
>>> affect what one can do with lua in luatex?
>>
>>
>>It does not, really.  And this is not relevant to a discussion about
>> XeTeX.
>
>
> It is, since it may determine how dependent I and others
> may be on xetex still being around.  If the replacement
> can't do what you want then you can't do the switch.
>
> However I very much like being able to use teckit mappings,
> so I really wish xetex will stay around.
>
If you find the right hook, you can do the same eg with regular
expressions. it will be possible to do even more then with teckit but
the correct hooks must be found.

> /bpj
>
>
>
>
>
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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Philip TAYLOR]

Martin Schröder wrote:


I seem to remember a Java reimplementation of TeX managed by you...


So do I, Martin, very clearly indeed.  And I also remember e-TeX,
developed within the same project team and as important today as
it was during its evolutionary years.  It is in the nature of
both software development and of evolution that some mutations
will succeed, others will fail.  e-TeX succeeded, NTS failed.
It is as simple as that.

** Phil.



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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[BPJ]

On 2012-08-01 01:48, Arthur Reutenauer wrote:


  How does this
affect what one can do with lua in luatex?


   It does not, really.  And this is not relevant to a discussion about
XeTeX.


It is, since it may determine how dependent I and others
may be on xetex still being around.  If the replacement
can't do what you want then you can't do the switch.

However I very much like being able to use teckit mappings,
so I really wish xetex will stay around.

/bpj




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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Zdenek Wagner]

2012/8/1 Ulrike Fischer :
> Am Wed, 1 Aug 2012 12:30:52 +0200 schrieb Zdenek Wagner:
>
>>> (As an aside I think that one should not only put pressure on
>>> xetex/luatex/open type engines to support all sorts of open type
>>> features and scripts but also on some scripts to adapt a bit to the
>>> computer age.)
>
>> Do you mean it?
>
> Yes.
>
>> Will people in India be forced to learn one
>> orthography in order to read the texts found everywhere in the
>> streets, in books, supported by MS Office, OpenOffice, LibreOffice,
>> all modern web browsers and another orthography for luatex? And how
>> about typesetting ancient text? Do you suggest to use the same
>> approach as the Indian newspapers Musulman? The editors were not
>> satisfied with the typographical quality of the Urdu text therefore
>> the newspapers are handwritten.
>
> Well you only confirm my impression: That quite a lot of scripts
> never felt the pressure put on us by the movable type printing.
> Western glyphs used in prints were greatly influenced by the
> technical possibilities and were adapted to what was possible. For
> me the idea that a printed document should look like "handwritten"
> is curious.
>
I do not state that it should look as handwritten but at least the
glyohs should have correct order and shape that is not too much
different (even in handwriting Devanagari has variants). With the
current version of luatex the correct order of glyphs cannot be
acheved. If I copy&past a text from Hindi Wikipedia and typeset it in
XeTeX, the result will be OK. If I do the same in luatex, the result
will be garbage.
> --
> Ulrike Fischer
> http://www.troubleshooting-tex.de/
>
>
>
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http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz



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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Martin Schröder]

2012/8/1 Philip TAYLOR :
> Well, you could always write your own JavaScript interpreter
> in Lua and get the best of both worlds :-)

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10259842/would-it-make-sense-to-run-javascript-on-the-lua-vm

We are all very eagerly awaiting your contributions.

I seem to remember a Java reimplementation of TeX managed by you...


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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Philip TAYLOR]

Well, you could always write your own JavaScript interpreter
in Lua and get the best of both worlds :-)

Martin Schröder wrote:
bably not. IIRC the binaries where around 75 KB (Lua) and

750 KB(JS). Compare this with 1 MB for a recent Knuthian TeX
binary (on Linux) and 2 MB for pdfTeX.

JS was simply a behemoth to pull in compared to Lua.



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Re: [XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Wed, 1 Aug 2012 12:30:52 +0200 schrieb Zdenek Wagner:

>> (As an aside I think that one should not only put pressure on
>> xetex/luatex/open type engines to support all sorts of open type
>> features and scripts but also on some scripts to adapt a bit to the
>> computer age.)

> Do you mean it? 

Yes.

> Will people in India be forced to learn one
> orthography in order to read the texts found everywhere in the
> streets, in books, supported by MS Office, OpenOffice, LibreOffice,
> all modern web browsers and another orthography for luatex? And how
> about typesetting ancient text? Do you suggest to use the same
> approach as the Indian newspapers Musulman? The editors were not
> satisfied with the typographical quality of the Urdu text therefore
> the newspapers are handwritten.

Well you only confirm my impression: That quite a lot of scripts
never felt the pressure put on us by the movable type printing.
Western glyphs used in prints were greatly influenced by the
technical possibilities and were adapted to what was possible. For
me the idea that a printed document should look like "handwritten"
is curious.

-- 
Ulrike Fischer 
http://www.troubleshooting-tex.de/



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