[tex-live] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Sun, 30 Oct 2011 16:25:21 +1100 schrieb Vafa Khalighi:

> 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. 

That's why I recommend people who simply want to write e.g. their
thesis in peace xelatex oder lualatex. lualatex is still
experimental. 

> I personally believe that it is a bad practice that luaotfload
> just copies ConTeXt code, it should not be deeply dependent on
> ConTeXt

I don't think that it would be good if each format would have its
own code with perhaps its own syntax, its own font cache. 

Also writing a good font loader is not easy, you need quite a lot
knowledge to write and maintain a good fontloader. It would be silly
not to use the knowledge of Hans for LaTeX and to redo all the work
he has done.

But it is imho a problem that the font loader code of context is in
many places to deeply integrated in the context code. Font loading
is a very central part of each format based on luatex. luatex (as
engine) will at my opionion only survive if there is a reliably font
loader usable by everyone - from plain, context, latex ...  So a
font loader should be written as a sort of library with clear API
which can be used by every format. 


> 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!

How would independent Code solve the problem you are mentioning? The
author of every font loader could do experimenting. Or he could
suddendly switch to something else and then there is another large
unmaintained package around. 


-- 
Ulrike Fischer