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