[XeTeX] Localized XeLaTeX: was Greek XeLaTeX

[Mojca Miklavec]

On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 12:57, Keith J. Schultz wrote:
>
>        If Yes, then the question would be how easy would it be to modify Xe(La)TeX
>        to be localizable.

Easy as long as you don't require the parenthesis to stay :)
That is: if you start with "XeConTeXt" ... It already comes with
Arabic interface, so creating a Greek one should not be such a
problem.

XeLaTeX is no more than the good old LaTeX definitions loaded on top
of XeTeX engine. With some patches, but hardly any (I would expect
XeLaTeX to at least load OpenType LM fonts, but it doesn't do even
that; on the other hand it's easy enough to change fonts).

Creating a localizable XeLaTeX would mean rewriting LaTeX from bottom
up ... in which case you may just as well take ConTeXt or write "yet
another alternative to LaTeX and ConTeXt" if you have a grant to allow
you to do that.

But of course you can always do simply
    \let\greekcommand=\englishcommand
for all the commands you might be aware of ... but you still end up
with packages that need to be called with their original name written
in latin, and if you want to load any package, you need to translate
all of their commands as well. In which case you end up with a
TeX4HT-sized project.

Mojca