2011/11/18 Keith J. Schultz <keithjschu...@web.de>: > Hi Pihilip, > > Thoughout, my programming life and experience I have learned > that internal structure means nothing, as long as the result is correct > when it comes out. > > As you rightfully point out the problem lies inside how TeX internally > handles space characters when adding them to its internal structure. > > The fact is that initially, TeX was not designed to handle modern typesetting > well. (Xe)TeX's internals are partially quite outdated. It is possible to to > handle > all this "new" type of spaces in (Xe)TeX, yet it is quite awkward and you > have to be > a TeXchian to do it properly. > > My personal opinion is that TeX et al. has to be revamped completely. > Ideally, it should get > a natural language parser as a front end and the typesetting module as its > back-end for its > output. > I admit that things could be done better than in nowadays TeX but its complete revamping seems to me as bad investment. I would rather think of an FO processor.
> Yes, I know this would not be TeX any more and require a complete different > structure of the > TeX eco-system. Language modules and the like. I you care to discuss this we > cam back channel > as it would be to OT, here. > > regards > Keith. > > Am 17.11.2011 um 20:56 schrieb Philip TAYLOR: > >> Ross, I do not dispute your arguments : I was answering >> Keith's question in an honest way. I (personally) do not >> think of a space in TeX output as a character at all, >> because I am steeped in TeX philosophy; but I am quite >> willing to accept that /if/ the objective is not to >> produce output for the sake of output, but output for >> subsequent processing as input by another program, then >> there /may/ be an argument for outputting a space as a >> variable-width glyph. >> >> However, I do think that what appears in the output stream >> is a secondary consideration; far more important (IMHO) is >> how we represent that space /within XeTeX/. There is, I am >> sure, not a suggestion on the table that we start to treat >> a conventional space in XeTeX other than as TeX has traditionally >> treated it, and therefore the real question is (to my mind), >> "do we adopt an extension of this traditional TeX treatment >> for non-breaking space, thin-space, and any of the other >> not-quite-standard spaces that Unicode encompasses, or do >> we look for an alternative model which /might/ be glyph- >> or character-based ?". > > > > > -------------------------------------------------- > Subscriptions, Archive, and List information, etc.: > http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex > -- Zdeněk Wagner http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/ http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz -------------------------------------------------- Subscriptions, Archive, and List information, etc.: http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex