[XeTeX] XITS Math font - first beata

[George N. White III]

On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 3:50 PM, Khaled Hosny <khaledhosny at eglug.org> wrote:

> On Sun, Jun 06, 2010 at 03:57:53AM +0930, Will Robertson wrote:
>> On 2010-06-06 02:54:13 +0930, Taco Hoekwater <taco at elvenkind.com>
>> said:
>>
>> >Will Robertson wrote:
>> >>On 2010-06-06 01:28:46 +0930, Eelis van der Weegen
>> >><eelis at eelis.net> said:
>> >>
>> >>>If so, to what extent would this make XITS obsolete?
>> >>
>> >>Depends how good a job they do :)
>> >
>> >And whether the current STIX release schedule is reliable. Judging
>> >from past results, it is altogether possible that v1.1 won't be
>> >ready for release for half a decade yet.
>>
>>
>> I'm a little sensitive to calling people out on missed deadlines...
>
> But missing every stated deadline in 5 years (more?) is a bit special
> you know. I've been missing every stated deadline for releasing my
> Arabic font for a couple of years now myself, but I either state those
> deadlines privately or not at all, not publish them in the front page of
> my website. I appreciate all the effort put into STIX and the fact it
> was eventually released under free/libre font license, but they should
> have learnt a lesson from the always missed deadlines...
>
>> anyway, if this ends up being true then they may as well commission
>> Khaled to do the job for them :)
>
> One thing that I'd like to do, giving enough incentive, is to convert
> XITS into a set of Type1 and TFM fonts for use with legacy TeX engines.
> It can be fairly automated; read the font in FontForge, map MATH to TeX
> properties and write back a set of subset Type1 fonts and corresponding
> PL files, but I don't feel like investing time in learning obsolete
> technologies (Type1, TFM, PL, LaTeX math etc.), so, apart from the
> potential large number of people who would benefit from it, there is no
> much incentive.

I expect STIX will have to provide Type 1 fonts for use with legacy
workflows (and because TeX's unicode support isn't ready for use
in production environments).  I think there are more who will
benefit from being able use maths with native languages that are
not well supported by those legacy TeX technologies, so I my view
efforts to improve support for unicode fonts will certainly be useful
for many years to come, while making XITS work with legacy TeX
may end up duplicating the efforts of the STIX project (and, assuming
they haven't all retired by the time v 1.1 comes out, people who have
many years experience with the legacy technologies).

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