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

[Chris Travers]

On Sat, Oct 29, 2011 at 1:57 AM, Philip TAYLOR (Webmaster, Ret'd)
<P.Taylor at rhul.ac.uk> wrote:
> Mu EUR 0,02 :
>
> Chris Travers wrote:
>
>> A couple things I'd point out.  TeX makes it possible to create
>> beautiful books.  LaTeX makes it possible to create beautiful books
>> easily.
>
> but encourages users to create ugly ones.
>
> Why do I say this ?  Well, a user wishing to typeset a book
> using TeX has to /think/, and, having thought, will almost certainly
> come up with a better design than LaTeX offers out of the box.
>
> A LaTeX user, on the other hand, will -- until he or she becomes
> sufficiently skilled and informed to know better -- almost certainly
> just use one of the canned styles based on Computer Modern with
> excessive white space that LaTeX provides by default.
>
I think you are assuming a lot about knowledge of book design.  The
LaTeX styles out of the box are a bit formal.  I think the margins are
too wide, and I prefer different fonts....  But I would hardly call
them "ugly" compared to a lot of what gets put out by professional
presses these days.  Indeed one of the things I did when designing my
book was I carefully went through the default styles, not only with an
eye for what I wanted to change but also with an eye for what I wanted
to keep.  I then went through a stack of books with an eye for design,
deciding what design elements I liked or didn't like.  The result was
a book design I really like.

My editor initially suggested a ragged right edge (because word
processes have terrible kerning) but after he saw the output decided
that  this was good justified.

The biggest hazard of doing this though isn't that you will produce an
ugly book.  It's that you will look at every other book you pick up
first from a design perspective and then only later get around to
content :-P.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers