[pdftex] xetex and pdftex

[George N. White III]

On Mon, Sep 7, 2009 at 10:36 AM, John Culleton<john at wexfordpress.com> wrote:

> On Sunday 06 September 2009 18:37:47 Robin Fairbairns wrote:
>> John Culleton <john at wexfordpress.com> wrote:
>> > In theory xetex should be pdftex with enhanced font handling
>> > capability.
>>
>> weird.  what theory would that be?
>>
>> xetex was designed for the convenience of the users who sil
> support, not
>> on the basis of someone else's theory.
>>
>> robin
>
> And good morning to you.
>
> It was my earlier impression that xetex was a full pdftex but with
> better font handling, which is not in accordance with the facts, it
> seems.  Some things that work under pdftex don't work under
> xetex.
>
> We do need an updated full pdftex which can access resident
> system fonts of the three major flavors, Type 1, TrueType and OTF,
> without the complexities of map files and tfm files.  I am also
> examining Luatex.

Be careful what you wish for.  XeTeX is very useful, but on MacOS X
you can't run it in a terminal session because it uses the system
fonts and rendering that are only available.   Future TeX systems
that use system fonts, parallel processing, and the graphics
processor (for faster compilations) will not come without some
tradeoffs.

-- 
George N. White III <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia