[XeTeX] XeTeX for Linux (first experiencies)

[Jonathan Kew]

On 6 Jun 2006, at 5:46 pm, Pablo Rodríguez wrote:
>
> If I don't get it wrong, what it would be required at least, after
> having rewritten .sty and .ldf files for Greek, Russian, Hebrew (and
> maybe others), would be a different language.dat file for XeTeX.
>
> So it would be possible to hyphenate these languages in both LaTeX and
> XeLaTeX and it would be possible to hyphenate Irish and Ukranian in  
> LaTeX.
>
> Is that right or am I missing something?

That would be one approach, but I have been trying to avoid splitting  
the xelatex configuration from the latex configuration in this way,  
as I think it will be a source of confusion to users. The aim is to  
allow a user's existing latex configuration (choice of hyphenation  
patterns, etc) to be automatically "inherited" by xelatex.

For the most part, this works; and for the cases where it doesn't, I  
would prefer to fix it by updating/adapting the pattern files, etc.,  
rather than by forcing users to maintain two versions of  
language.dat. This shouldn't really be very difficult -- it's just a  
matter of time. There's only one of me, and I have "real work" to do  
as well, so it can be hard to find a few minutes for xelatex  
issues.... :(

We'll get there, I'm sure, but it's never as quick as we'd wish!

JK