On Sep 8, 2010, at 5:25 AM, Michiel Kamermans wrote:
On 9/7/2010 9:23 PM, Wilfred van Rooijen wrote:
It seems that there have been no replies to the list about
Michiel's proposal to make a combined xe(la)tex reference manual
and user manual. Personally I would be willing to contribute, but I
am not an expert on xetex, rather a casual user with perhaps
"advanced" experience of using latex for several types of
(scientific) publications. Michiel, what exactly so you have in
mind? A Xe(La)TeX Companion, i.e. similar to the latex companion
but based on xelatex, and then expanded to include more references
to xetex specific commands and programming?
I can see something like this: a user manual focusing on xelatex,
typesetting of scientific works, bibtex and the associated front
ends, hyperref etc, beamer to make presentations, TikZ (2D and 3D)
to make figures, in short, something like a latex companion but
modernized and expanded to include a reference manual.
That was my idea. I was considering starting with the "XeTeX
companion" [1] that Michel Goossens collaboratively started in 1996,
and extending it/updating it to cover the basic topic of TeX, the
specific topic of the XeTeX flavour, and all commonly used packages
that end up being discussed on this list again and again (fontspec,
polyglossia, hyperref, xeCJK, bidi, etc), as well as a section on
writing your own commands and package, also highlighting common
basic TeX commands you should at least have seen if you want to have
any hope of writing a decent XeTeX command yourself, like the "Plain
TeX Quick Reference" [2], but then adapted to also contain the XeTeX
specific commands that let one write a generally useful macro. A
section on pdf-related commands would also be essential, I think,
especially for those who need to generate production PDF (several
people in the past year asked questions falling under that topic).
Just a couple of comments here as both a LaTeX and XeLaTeX user who
also deals quite often with new users (students):
The documentation plan as described above by both Wilfred and Mike
seems to involve an awful lot of duplication between existing LaTeX
documentation, and this seems like a waste of everyone's time. The
tricky part, of course, is separating out the the Xe from the LaTeX
information. Since the vast majority of LaTeX packages are engine
independent, it doesn't make sense to explain them separately in
XeLaTeX documentation.
On the other hand, there are some basic issues that need to be dealt
with that are engine specific, like fonts, input encoding and the
various great new packages that depend on xelatex. It would make the
most sense to focus on this sort of documentation first. Also helpful
might be something like "what parts to ignore/replace of LaTeX
documentation when using XeLaTeX".
One other thing that arises with XeLaTeX that doesn't with LaTeX is
the fact that documents are no longer as portable as they are with
LaTeX. Unfortunately, simplifying access to system fonts comes with
this cost. We've already encountered this with the occasional
question about how to compile the fontspec documentation, but the
problem is more general as we think of making any XeLaTeX
documentation more general itself.
Alan
--
Alan Munn
am...@gmx.com
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