[XeTeX] XeTeX in lshort

[Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd)]

Michiel Kamermans wrote:

> While they're "available" for windows, windows users don't use them.
> Only people who transcend the OS label because they use multiple
> operating systems and have learned to like vim or emacs enough to want
> to use it on all their operating systems will also use these on windows.

As an ex-VMS, now Windows, user, I completely agree.  And of course,
as an ex-VMS user, I continue to use EDT under Windows, courtesy
of Boston Business Computing.

> Windows users use things like textpad (although because it still refuses
> to move to unicode, much less so than a few years ago), notepad++,
> notepad2, ultraedit, and all those "they started as windows programs so
> every windows user recommends them to their windows user friends".

Many of us also use WinEDT, though its lack of support for Unicode
(even in its V6 guise, which some love and others hate) makes
it unsuitable as an editor for most Xe[La]TeX use.  I have tried
to acquire a taste for TeXworks, but it has the same shortcoming
as WinEDT V6 : one "I do it all" button, where some (such as myself)
would prefer separate buttons for PdfTeX, PdfLaTeX, XeTeX, XeLaTeX,
Perl and so on (because a single job might require one or more runs
of each, and changing the functionality of the "I do it all" button
is a right pain in the @rse).

> Anything that's from the GNU stable can *very* safely be said to be a
> *nix thing, even though every single gnu program can be, and likely has
> already at this point been compiled for windows, too.

Also agreed.  Which is not to say that I do not use useful tools
such as Wget, Rsynch, and so on.

Philip Taylor