[XeTeX] Drawing package for XeTeX in plain TeX?

[John Was]

Thanks very much for that advice on PGF/TikZ.  As a novice with XeTeX I'm 
still getting to grips with things, and I guess I've chosen just the wrong 
time to get started since the TexLive2007 implemenation seems already 
slightly out of date for handling some of the latest packages.   I'm not 
sure if I should just uninstall TexLive completely and load the latest 
version another way, or whether I can just substitute updated .exe files 
(and other files) in order to get everything to work smoothly. I might feel 
brave enough after a large glass of brandy...

I'm very proud of the fact that so far I've managed to crash XeTeX at least 
twenty times when trying to use some of the PS fonts in my EmTeX 
installation!  And it doesn't like some of the Windows fonts on my system, 
but I find it's much more stable if I use [...] to load a font directly from 
the font file itself (even though kpathsea objects that [ is an invalid 
character in a font name).

Best


John


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Olivier Binda" <olivier.binda at wanadoo.fr>
To: <xetex at tug.org>
Sent: Monday, May 21, 2007 10:22 AM
Subject: JunkEmail: Re: [XeTeX] Drawing package for XeTeX in plain TeX?


> PGF/TikZ works really fine with XeTeX.
>
> It only has a few caveat compared to pstricks such as : as there is no
> inline graphics possibility, you have to rely on exterenal programms for
> that (gnu plot, mathematica, etc..)
>
> It is easy, powerfull and well designed.
> It produces beautifull pictures and it is very fast (and you don't have
> to rely on postscript anymore).
>
> One big advantage of Tikz/pgf is that it produces svg pictures...So,
> with pgf/Tikz+XeTeX, you can produce the same pictures for HTML output
> as for PDF output (and pstricks doesn't do that, if I'm not mistaken...)
>
> Indeed,  Eitan Gurary has implemented (as of 24/04/2007) initial support
> in tex4ht for XeTeX
> (It works great, nearly all TeX features are implemented...but XeTeX
> specifics (like non-TeX font management, etc...) aren't for the moment
> though they might be in the future as he wrote himself on the 24/04/2007 :
>
> >Now that I have access to the code of xdv2pdf and xdvipdfmx I believe
>
>>I can use those programs to fully learn how the fonts are being
>>handled by XeTeX.  Most of the job probably would be to extract a few
>>XeTeX pieces of code from xdvipdfmx and modify them to the needs of
>>tex4ht.  However, my concern it will take me quite a few additional
>>weeks to do the job, on top of the week it already took me to modify
>>tex4ht to avoid the non-tex fonts, and I can't afford such an
>>investment of time now.
>
>>Getting someone with a knowledge similar to that of Jonathan Kew
>>contracted to do some of the job and provide guidance might make the
>>task much easier to accomplish.  I don't feel comfortable to approach
>>others to ask for such help.
>
>>-eitan
>
> As you can see, he might be a little shy to approach Jonathan for help...
>
> Well, It's probably very unpolite from me to ask this but this would 
> profit us all
> (Pgf/Tikz+XeteX producing (x)Html +svg+ mathml code...wouldn't this be 
> nice ?) :
>
> Jonathan, would it be possible for you to help Eitan Gurary a little bit ?
>
> If Eitan could get the answers to  a few questions or talk 10 minutes with 
> you, it might bring even better support for TeX4ht and XeTeX and spare him 
> weeks deciphering code and trying to find the answers all by himself.
>
> Olivier Binda
> ps : I beg forgivance to Eitan and Jonathan for my rudeness
>
> _______________________________________________
> XeTeX mailing list
> postmaster at tug.org
> http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex
>