[XeTeX] LuaTeX et al

[Taco Hoekwater]

Hi all,

Sorry about crossposting, but I feel i have to reply to two threads
at the same time.

Will Robertson wrote:
> Here's a link to the slides for the pdftex extensions discussed at
> EuroTeX, by the way:
>   <http://matexhu.org/eurotex2006/lectures/pdftex/>
> (Careful of that 7MB "fontreader" PDF -- it's not interesting! In fact,
> what is it?)

That file is a graphical presentation of traditional TeX's process
of loading a TFM file, in 700 or so steps (each a metapost graphic
page).

> As William has already mentioned, a document compiled with an OpenType
> font will result in identical output on any platform supported by XeTeX

Apologies. It seems I have misunderstood how that part of XeTeX
works. Does that imply that it can also access uninstalled
OpenType fonts directly?

I was not trying to be dismissive of XeTeX in my post. Someone
asked exactly how XeTeX would affect pdfTeX developments, so I
answered that question the way I see it.

For the record: I like the idea of XeTeX a lot. I have almost no
time to play with it myself, unfortunately.
(but that was not the question, so I didn't answer it :-))

> This is through its use of the ICU OpenType rendering library; I
> can't see any reason here to want to reinvent the wheel. Of course,
> it's only a component of the system you're discussing.

IIRC, ICU does not support the microtypography already present in
pdfTeX (font expansion, hanging punctuation). But if it does, or if
it is likely that it will start doing so in the very near future,
than it is definately worth looking into (so please let me know).

Best wishes,

Taco