[tex-live] [XeTeX] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Vafa Khalighi]

Are you talking about TeX--XeT bidirectional typesetting algorithm?

No, It has several major bugs and it is not perfect for RTL typesetting (ok
but not perfect).

On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 3:18 AM, Petr Tomasek <tomasek at etf.cuni.cz> wrote:

> 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 <khaledhosny at 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: butrus at jabbim.cz
>
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