[XeTeX] Status of babel and polyglossia in xelatex

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Wed, 9 Dec 2009 19:29:11 +0800 schrieb Vladimir Lomov:


>>> I want to try fontspec features :). I know that babel uses fontencodings
>>> while this is not neccessary for xelatex (is it?).
 
>> Xelatex needs fontencodings too but as it is unicode orientated and
>> can handle large fonts it doesn't to switch between fontencoding so
>> often.

> Hm, I thought that _because_ xelatex could handle large fonts it doesn't
> need fontencoding at all! Where fontencoding could be used in xelatex?
> May be in math mode?

Yes, there too. But also in some special cases when symbols are
involved which are not in unicode (e.g. chess symbols). 
But don't forget that unicode is an encoding too! So even if you
type only simple text there is at least one font encoding involved
(fontspec uses the name EU1 in this case). 

-- 
Ulrike Fischer