[XeTeX] Re: [MacTeX] XeTeX

[Bruno Voisin]

(Sorry in advance if the message looks undecipherable to some of you, I
have problems getting line breaks to work with the current version of
Safari and the SquirrelMail I've got to use.)
More on XeTeX: having installed it for testing yesterday, I'm worried  
now
that there is no straightforward way to uninstall it, and that by being
there it might (i) perturb the normal working of gwTeX and (ii) not
survive its future updates.
Looking at the postflight file inside XeTeX.pkg, which contains:

> # now put the files where we really expect to find them
>
> mv /tmp/xetex-install/bin/*   ${bindir}
> mv /tmp/xetex-install/web2c/* ${web2cdir}
> mv /tmp/xetex-install/otf/*   ${otfdir}

and later

> # try to edit texmf.cnf to create an OTFFONTS entry
> # if there doesn't seem to be one already present
>
> if [ -e /Library/teTeX/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf ]; then
> 	echo "attempting to edit texmf.cnf" >> /tmp/xetex-install/log
> 	/usr/bin/perl -i.bak -e '$/=undef; $_=<>; s@(\nT1FONTS.*\n)@\1\n%
> 	OpenType fonts\nOTFFONTS = .;\$TEXMF/fonts/otf//\n@ unless
> 	m@\nOTFFONTS@; print' /Library/teTeX/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf> fi

it seems that:

- binaries are installed inside  
/usr/local/teTeX/bin/powerpc-apple-darwin6.8:

-rwxr-xr-x  1 brunovoi  staff   515460  7 Apr 16:51 xdv2pdf
lrwxr-xr-x  1 brunovoi  staff        5  9 Apr 23:13 xeinitex -> xetex
-rwxr-xr-x  1 brunovoi  staff  1060392  7 Apr 16:51 xetex
lrwxr-xr-x  1 brunovoi  staff        5  9 Apr 23:13 xevirtex -> xetex

- formats are created inside /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/web2c:

lrwxr-xr-x  1 brunovoi  staff       10  9 Apr 23:13 plain.xfmt ->  
xetex.xfmt
-rw-r--r--  1 brunovoi  staff    28726  7 Apr 16:51 xetex.pool
-rw-r--r--  1 brunovoi  staff   995986  7 Apr 16:51 xetex.xfmt

- OTF versions of the CM and AMS fonts are put inside
/usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/fonts/otf:
-rw-r--r--  1 brunovoi  staff  18436  2 May  2003 cmb10.otf
-rw-r--r--  1 brunovoi  staff  21904  2 May  2003 cmbsy10.otf
-rw-r--r--  1 brunovoi  staff  22652  2 May  2003 cmbsy5.otf
[...]

- an OTFFONTS entry is added to  
/usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf:

% OpenType fonts
OTFFONTS = .;$TEXMF/fonts/otf//

Fot those here who know better the inner workings of gwTeX than me, can
this lead to problems (i) or (ii) above?
All in all my impression is that XeTeX is a major advance for us
afficionados of TeX on the Mac, this is an impressive piece of work,  
great
attention has been put to build upon existing tools, but I have concerns
about:
- Compatibility: What are the specificiations of XDV format? Is it
compatible with standard extensions to TeX? Can it accommodate to LaTeX  
(I
assume yes)? hyperref (I assume not)?
- Ease of use (but this is normal for prerelease software): No easy way  
is
provided for compiling a LaTeX format and making it work with TeXShop,  
for
example. (As I write this I see a message coming in from Ross telling  
this
can be done, I'll look at it later.)
- Coordination: It would be more productive, I think, and better for the
popularity for TeX on the Mac at large, that the design of XeTeX and in
particular of the XDV format be coordinated with developers of existing
implementations and variants of TeX (Gerben, Hans, and the other
knowledgeable people on this list), such that it is backwards-compatible
with what exists already, and in particular won't break LaTeX and its  
many
available packages.
Ross: I have no difficulties compiling CM-test.tex. In case you're using
TeXShop, did you select UTF-8 encoding?
Wendy: Back to your problem about visualizing the sample pages at the
XeTeX site on Mozilla and Red Hat, I'm now able to visualize them even
with popup blocking enabled, in both Safari and Mozilla. So the
explanation must be different: long time taken to display the samples,  
or
did you check that JavaScript is allowed in the Mozilla you're using?  
The
sample pages are visualized using HTML code such as:
> <table width='120' align='left' border='0' cellpadding='0'
> cellspacing='0' style='padding:0 8px 0 0'><tr><td>> <a
> onclick='javascript:window.open("render_graphic.php? 
> site_id=nrsi&type=graphic_in_html&title=Popup&filename=../sites/nrsi/ 
> media/xetex_unicode_hindi.png","Popup",
> "toolbar=0,location=0,status=1,menubar=0,scrollbars=1,resizable=1,width 
> =987,height=1018");'><img
> src='render_graphic.php?site_id=nrsi&type=media_graphic&filename=../ 
> sites/nrsi/media/ 
> xetex_unicode_hindi.png&image_type=png&width=100&height=102'
> width='100' height='102' border='0'/><img
> src='../assets/icons/magnify.gif' border='0'></a></td></tr>> <tr  
> style='padding:0 8px 0 0'><td style='padding:0 8px 0 0'><p
> class='Caption'>Hindi text typeset using AAT fonts</p></td></tr>>  
> </table>

Finally, I just realized that some information on XeTeX can be obtained
simply by typing in Terminal:
xetex -h

Bruno


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