[XeTeX] xetex and pdftex featuresets and support (was Re: (no subject))

[William Adams]

On Mar 5, 2008, at 4:38 AM, Peter Dyballa wrote:

>
> Am 05.03.2008 um 09:15 schrieb josef dev:
>
>>
>>> Can somebody tell if use of XeLaTeX is safe, i.e. all latex package
>>> will work and any LaTeX file compiled using XeLaTeX will give the
>>> identical results?
>>
>>
>> Often it will, but there are big exceptions. Especially with input
>> encodings, fonts, and, as you say, driver-provided support.
>
> No micro-typography available. Instead you find support from the
> font, i.e. you can choose particular font features like glyph
> variants (sub- and superscripts, lining or "old time" digits, initial/
> medial/isolated/final forms, ...).

One can of course, solve ``the easier problem'' of hanging punctuation  
by making characters active and having them adjust their positioning  
using macros.

>>> Is there anybody who maintains the xdvipdfmx driver and can support
>>> the updations?
>
>
> Yes. Jonathan Kew, the XeTeX developer, adds things to support the
> XeTeX output format XDV (http://scripts.sil.org/svn-view/xdvipdfmx/).
> Basically xdvipdfmx is an extended version of dvipdfmx (http://
> project.ktug.or.kr/dvipdfmx/), which is an extended version of
> dvipdfm. In Japan and in Korea extensions were written to make
> dvipdfm support far-eastern scripts with their multi-byte encodings.
> Dvipdfmx handles Unicode input encoding and CID "font encoding."


Jin-Hwan Cho has taken over active development and has made some  
presentations at various TUG meetings.

William


-- 
William Adams
senior graphic designer
Fry Communications