[XeTeX]   in XeTeX

Philip TAYLOR P.Taylor at Rhul.Ac.Uk
Sun Nov 13 21:21:21 CET 2011



Tobias Schoel wrote:
> Now, that the practicability is cleared, let's come back to the
> philosophical part:

Actually, I think this is the practical/pragmatic part,
but let's carry on none the less ...
>
> Should &nbsp=u00a0 be active and treated as ~ by default? Just like
> u202f and u2009 should be active and treated as \, and \,\hspace{0pt}?

Well : a macro-based solution is certainly the best place
to start (and to experiment) but the particular expansions
that you have chosen are not entirely generic : \hspace,
for example, is unknown in Plain TeX, and is therefore
better replaced with \hskip.  Whether \hskip would then
work happily with LaTeX, I have no idea, but it is by
no means unreasonable to think that there might be format-
specific definitions for each of these characters.
>
> Where would such a default take place:
> - XeTeX engine
> - XeLaTeX format
> - some package (xunicode, fontspec, some new package)
> - my own package/preamble template

None of these ?  In a stand-alone file that can be \input
by Plain XeTeX users, by XeLaTeX users, and by XeLaTeX
package authors.

In a future XeTeX variant (if such a thing comes to exist),
the functionality could be built into the engine.

My EUR 0,02 (while we still have one).
** Phil.


More information about the XeTeX mailing list