[XeTeX] [tex-live] Ftuture state of XeTeX in TeXLive

[Philip TAYLOR (Webmaster, Ret'd)]

Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 13:19, Vafa Khalighi wrote:
>> Hi
>> Since Jonathan has no time any more for coding XeTeX, then what will be the
>> state of XeTeX in TeX distributions such as TeXLive? will be XeTeX removed
>> from TeXLive just like Aleph and Omega (in favour of LuaTeX) were removed
>> from TeXLive?
>
> Omega was remove because it was buggy, unmaintained, but most
> important of all: hardly usable. It took a genius to figure out how to
> use it, while XeTeX is exactly the contrary. It simplifies everything
> in comparison to pdfTeX.

I think that last remark is grossly unfair, although probably
not intentionally so.  XeTeX adds functionality that was non-
existent in PdfTeX, but that hardly makes it simpler.  It
also introduces a non-TeXlike syntax, particularly (perhaps
only) in the extended \font primitive that could (IMHO)
have been better thought out, particularly in the overloading
of string quotes and the introduction of square brackets.

Philip Taylor