On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 09:20:19AM -0300, George N. White III wrote: > On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 7:42 AM, Khaled Hosny <khaledho...@eglug.org> wrote: > > > On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 04:25:21PM +1100, Vafa Khalighi wrote: > >> XeTeX font support is heaps better and stable than what luaotfload package > >> offers and I guess that is why many users still like using xetex instead > >> luatex. I personally believe that it is a bad practice that luaotfload just > >> copies ConTeXt code, it should not be deeply dependent on ConTeXt because > >> Hans > >> may want to try experimenting with some features today and next day he > >> gets rid > >> of them just like the recent updates of luaotfload that Khaled talked > >> about it. > >> I think, this is awful! What should users who used those features (and > >> need it > >> heavily in their daily typesetting tasks, do?). They wake up one day and > >> suddenly see that yes, luaotfload does not provide the features they need. > >> luaotfload needs to be written from scratch independent of any ConTeXt > >> code. > > > > The situation is not as bad as you make it seems, what have gone is two > > minor features that IMO was a mistake to provide them in the first > > place, but since we are talking about a yet to be released version of > > luaotfload, there might be an alternate solution at the time of release. > > > > Writing an OpenType layout engine is not a simple task, and you can > > judge from the many years it toke FOSS community to have a really good > > one, HarfBuzz (the name luaotfload is misleading, font loading is about > > the easiest part of luaotfload, OpenType implementation is really what > > matters.) If it were for me, I'd plug HarfBuzz into luatex proper and > > call it a day, but this does not align well with the "design" principles > > of luatex so it is unlikely to happen. > > If plugging harfbuzz into luatex does not require a huge effort, it could > serve as bridge from xetex to luatex while a more principled design > is being created.
It would be better to have XeTeX with a stable HarfBuzz-ng support. Actually, I think little people need more then than what XeTTeX acctually provides... -- Petr Tomasek <http://www.etf.cuni.cz/~tomasek> Jabber: but...@jabbim.cz ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ EA 355:001 DU DU DU DU EA 355:002 TU TU TU TU EA 355:003 NU NU NU NU NU NU NU EA 355:004 NA NA NA NA NA ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -------------------------------------------------- Subscriptions, Archive, and List information, etc.: http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex