[XeTeX] Request for Participation (RFP)

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 04.12.2008 um 00:23 schrieb Neaale Hirsh:

> \usepackage[cm-default]{fontspec}       % XeLaTeX only
> \defaultfontfeatures{Mapping=tex-text}  % XeLaTeX only
> \setmainfont{Times New Roman}           % XeLaTeX only
> \documentclass[12pt]{article}           % XeLaTeX only
> This is some text                       % XeLaTeX only


Neale,

can it be that you assume fontspec is XeTeX's LaTeX?

As you wrote, XeTeX is able to use fonts in *some* way. As TeX can.  
LaTeX introduced, quite late, a useful scheme to handle fonts (New  
Font Selection Scheme, NFSS). Because XeTeX is enabling this fontspec  
is meant to access non-TeX features of non-TeX fonts. In XeLaTeX,  
XeTeX's LaTeX variant.

So I diagnose that you need to learn LaTeX to understand fontspec's  
add-ons. This would allow you to correct what I have cited (assuming  
it's intended as the start of a XeLaTeX document).


What I can offer is answers to questions that might have asked years  
ago and have now forgotten. If you could repeat my questions – I  
still have (improved) answers! With these questions and (more)  
answers you could compile the work. It will help both: you and other  
XWPs.

I would also comment on the compilation.


Answers

Xunicode is meant for those XeLaTeX users that keep writing \"a  
instead of ä. And so on.

Xltxtra helps in using macros like \XeTeX or \XeLaTeX. It adds  
commands like \textsuperscript and \textsubscript, which are useful  
when you write about a green-house problem caused by CO2 or CH4 or  
H2O and also when you try to abbreviate the costs that banks cost  
nowadays. The \vfrac command (which works better than xfrac) could be  
used to describe that in some not so far future carbon-dioxide could  
fulfil one hundredth of the Earth's atmosphere. (There is also a now  
working \showhyphens command, but this is of a rather esoteric use.)

--
Greetings

   Pete

Real Time, adj.:
	Here and now, as opposed to fake time, which only occurs there and  
then.