[XeTeX] XeTeX in lshort

[Elliott Roper]

On 30 Sep 2010, at 22:52, Keith J. Schultz wrote:

> Hi Elliot,
> 
> Welcome aboard.
Thanks
> 
> First , if your on a Mac take a look at TeXShop, if not look at TeXWorks,
> it might be more familiar to you. It might be eaier that learning E-macs. (your call).
I'm loving Emacs. It's evil! I am on OS X and Aquamacs lets me take a pointy-clicky break when I can't find the cheat-sheet under the pile of TeX literature. 
> As far a documentation is concerned look at the LaTeX Companion for packages.
..and that's where I get a bit taken aback. The book arrives last Saturday. I head for the Index for the bits I really need.
XeTeX - nada
fontspec - zip
Unicode - uhuh
ConTeXt - err sorry
LuaTeX - the cat ate it
I turn to the cover, and yes, it says "Second Edition" The whole thing is devolving into the Monty Python cheese shop sketch.
> Forget about anything you find about encoding.
OK Yep, there's 137 pages of pine trees died in vain.
> 
> Forget about babel use polyglossia instead.
now THAT sounds like a Norwegian Blue. Beautiful plumage! (I do really bad jokes)
> Use Unicode and Unicode fonts.
Oh, yes. That's why I'm back here. With Unicode and support for proper typography the TeX panoply has me excited again about creating manageable documents where pointy-clicky tools have failed.
> As far as finding packages specifically designed around xetex I am at a loss, but pick up
> several names here. Maybe, some else can compile a list.
That's what I'm whinging about. That's what the XeTeX flavour of lshort needs to have in it.
Doing a resumé? Here's a suggested preamble, and here's pointers to the documentation of packages explicitly and implicitly invoked. Doing a booklet? ditto.. Setting Unicode math? Here's what's  different. (I found that one today, so I'm OK) <insert Monty Python joke here>

I'm gonna make it. It's an achievable challenge. And I'm determined to enjoy it too.

thanks all for the encouragement.
Elliott Roper