[XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Keith J. Schultz]

Hi Zdenek,


Am 07.08.2012 um 10:36 schrieb Zdenek Wagner <zdenek.wagner at gmail.com>:

>> 
> Please do not mix engine and format. XeTeX does a few things i a
> different way than TeX. In the LaTeX user's eyes the font loading is
> different. It was not practical to modify the old LaTeX font loading
> packages, therefore fontspec was developed. Due to encodings and other
> reasons babel has to do a lot of additional things that are no longer
> needed, therefore it was more practical to develop polyglossia. In
> spite of all that the XeLaTeX syntax is exactly the same as the LaTeX
> syntax. Briefly speaking, if I have a pure LaTeX code with default CM
> fonts in OT1 encoding, I can process it by XeLaTeX without any
> modification. Modifying a more complex LaTeX document for processing
> by XeLaTeX is a matter of changing a few lines in the preamble but
> they reflect just the engine change (TeX -> XeTeX).
	In principle LuaTeX is not different. There maybe just a little bit more code
	needed.
	At least there are provisions for handling of CM-fonts in LuaLaTeX.
	Though full support may not been implemented, yet. I have seen parts
	of code in the font loader. 
	Actually, I would think it that hard of a task to do it if it done already.
	But, why and how things are done in LuaTeX is something I will discuss
	over on hier dev list.

regards
	Keith.