[XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Wed, 1 Aug 2012 12:30:52 +0200 schrieb Zdenek Wagner:

>> (As an aside I think that one should not only put pressure on
>> xetex/luatex/open type engines to support all sorts of open type
>> features and scripts but also on some scripts to adapt a bit to the
>> computer age.)

> Do you mean it? 

Yes.

> Will people in India be forced to learn one
> orthography in order to read the texts found everywhere in the
> streets, in books, supported by MS Office, OpenOffice, LibreOffice,
> all modern web browsers and another orthography for luatex? And how
> about typesetting ancient text? Do you suggest to use the same
> approach as the Indian newspapers Musulman? The editors were not
> satisfied with the typographical quality of the Urdu text therefore
> the newspapers are handwritten.

Well you only confirm my impression: That quite a lot of scripts
never felt the pressure put on us by the movable type printing.
Western glyphs used in prints were greatly influenced by the
technical possibilities and were adapted to what was possible. For
me the idea that a printed document should look like "handwritten"
is curious.

-- 
Ulrike Fischer 
http://www.troubleshooting-tex.de/