[XeTeX] ConTeXt, luaTeX...

[Arthur Reutenauer]

> Does XeTeX process ConTeXt documents without any problem?

  Definitely.  You have to give the "--xetex" (or "--xtx") switch to
texexec to use the XeTeX engine.  Some messages from ConTeXt may look
funny right now, due to some magic it does for font lookup (many blank
lines are output to the terminal at some point, but you shouldn't worry
about that).

  Apart from that, ConTeXt attempt to support all of XeTeX's
idiosyncrasies and it should come as easy as using XeLateX + fontspec
(with ConTeXt instead of LaTeX macros, obviously).

> Will XeTeX and luaTeX join forces at some time

  As someone who has watched the recent development of both these
programs, I would say "most certainly not"; they have quite different
goals and I don't expect there would be a great benefit to merging the
two development branches (in comparison to the amount of work it
represents).  I think the main challenge for now is for macro packages
to really support all those engines.

>                                                (I assume that ConTeXt-ng 
> (aka MkIV) will run with luaTex only) ?

  I'm not sure what you mean with "ConTeXt-ng".  "Mark IV" is the
nickname for ConTeXt when you run it with the LuaTeX engine; when you
use pdfTeX instead, it's called "Mark II" (the XeTeX side of ConTeXt was
supposed to be called "Mark III", but Hans Hagen never used the name so
I stopped advertising it ;-)  Now it's simply a variant of Mark III).
Mark II will probably be there forever, but the active ConTeXt
development will focus on Mark IV.

	Arthur