[XeTeX] additional beginL endL nodes in math

Julian Bradfield jcb+xetex at jcbradfield.org
Fri Apr 17 14:07:42 CEST 2015


On 2015-04-16, David Carlisle <d.p.carlisle at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 16 April 2015 at 20:51, Khaled Hosny <khaledhosny at eglug.org> wrote:
>> That was very naive and did not work when inline math is broken over
>> multiple lines, so I reverted this and the whole TeX-XeT business. XeTeX
>> in TeX Live 2015 should behave identical to previous versions in this
>> area.
> Ah OK, sorry it didn't work out. I do see the problems with \specials
> and \writes in RTL text
> is a real problem.

It seems to me that this is a consequence of some really bad design
decisions in TeX !
I have wondered whether the right way to is to make a new variant of
TeX in which there are invisible whatsits (could call them boojums,
perhaps) which are ignored by most of TeX's list-(un)building
activities. For example, a glue-boojum-glue sequence would be treated
as a glue sequence, except that the boojum would remain behind when
the glue was discarded.

Boojum specials would instantly solve the absurd problem of colouring
display maths without screwing up the spacing.


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