[XeTeX] TeX in the modern World. (goes OT) Was: Re: Whitespace in input

[Adam Twardoch (List)]

> Yet, it remains one of the most
> powerful and cheapest typesetting systems to date.
"Cheap" in terms of initial investment -- surely, as it's open-source
and free.

"Cheap" in terms of implementing -- not quite so, because you need to
format your sources in a very specific, "isolated" syntax.

I initially tried to implement TeX in some projects of my own, and
switched to Prince XML (http://princexml.com/ )

I found it much easier to start with, as it takes HTML or XML + Unicode
+ CSS + SVG/bitmaps + OpenType fonts as input, executes JavaScript
during processing, has a rather high-quality, constantly improving
line-breaking algorithm, and produces reliable PDFs. Some aspects of it
are not quite as powerful as TeX's, but other aspects greatly surpass
TeX -- especially in terms of ease of use and quick implementation while
maintaining acceptably high quality.

So I ended up with Prince XML as my tool of choice because it natively
supports my "preferred input formats", i.e. the web formats. A
commercial server license costs 3800 USD, which may sound like a lot,
but I found it a fair price to pay for the comfort of being able to use
my content directly and without much debugging/converting/fine-tuning.

Best,
Adam

-- 

May success attend your efforts,
-- Adam Twardoch
(Remove "list." from e-mail address to contact me directly.)