[XeTeX] [tex-live] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Dominik Wujastyk]

Personally, I would not mind if XeTeX went into maintenance mode.  I like
such stability.  It already has a great deal of functionality, probably
enough to last me the rest of my writing career.  I do take Vafa's point,
though, that if future OS platforms break XeTeX, it would be nice to have
someone fix things up.

Dominik



On 28 October 2011 14:54, Vafa Khalighi <vafaklg at gmail.com> wrote:

> My question in the first place had nothing to do with the development of
> XeTeX. In fact it is a long time that there has been no development for
> XeTeX and I have no problem with that.  What scares me is that XeTeX may be
> unusable in say several years.
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 11:49 PM, Vafa Khalighi <vafaklg at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> That is not entirely true. Should the users of TeX (those who use Knuth's
>> original TeX engine) support the development of Knuth TeX or move to another
>> engine just because Knuth no longer extends TeX and he only fixes bugs?
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 11:33 PM, George N. White III <gnwiii at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 8:58 AM, Mojca Miklavec
>>> <mojca.miklavec.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> > On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 13:19, Vafa Khalighi wrote:
>>> >> Hi
>>> >> Since Jonathan has no time any more for coding XeTeX, then what will
>>> be the
>>> >> state of XeTeX in TeX distributions such as TeXLive? will be XeTeX
>>> removed
>>> >> from TeXLive just like Aleph and Omega (in favour of LuaTeX) were
>>> removed
>>> >> from TeXLive?
>>> >
>>> > Omega was remove because it was buggy, unmaintained, but most
>>> > important of all: hardly usable. It took a genius to figure out how to
>>> > use it, while XeTeX is exactly the contrary. It simplifies everything
>>> > in comparison to pdfTeX. Omega was low quality and Aleph was
>>> > deprecated also because LuaTeX now contains all functionality that was
>>> > worth keeping.
>>> >
>>> > There is no reason to remove XeTeX yet (unless it gets merged with
>>> > LuaTeX one day, but that won't happen yet), but it is true that a
>>> > maintainer is desperately needed. If nothing else, if nobody adapts
>>> > the code, it might stop working with next version of Mac OS X or a
>>> > version after that.
>>>
>>> If I have an old house that meets my needs but has substandard
>>> plumbing and wiring, I may be in desperate need of a contractor
>>> who can bring it up to current standards, or I can tear it down and
>>> build a new house.  Both options are expensive, but renovation
>>> involves greater uncertainties requires more skills than does new
>>> construction, so unless there are other considerations (house is a
>>> historical landmark), new construction is often better than renovation.
>>>
>>> Clearly XeTeX fills a need, but that doesn't mean it deserves ongoing
>>> development.   The groups that rely on XeTeX have to either find a way
>>> to support development or switch to a new engine, which at present is
>>> LuaTeX.   There has already been discussion of what would be needed
>>> to make the changes in XeTeX, maybe there needs to be discussion
>>> (in LuaTeX forums) of the barriers to adoption faced by the groups who
>>> currently rely on XeTeX.
>>>
>>> --
>>> George N. White III <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
>>> Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
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