[XeTeX] [luatex] Info on direction primitives/implementation

[Joseph Wright]

[Moved from the LuaTeX list as this moves me to XeTeX!]

On 04/12/2012 14:33, Khaled Hosny wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 04, 2012 at 01:52:19PM +0000, Joseph Wright wrote:
>> Very useful, thanks. Point about detail understood: at the moment I'm
>> trying to get my head around the entire area, and to see how the LuaTeX
>> version contrasts with the pdfTeX/XeTeX approach.
> 
> In the last few days I have been fancying the idea of scrapping TeX--XeT
> from XeTeX and replacing it with code from Aleph (with LuaTeX
> modifications backported to it), but no work has been done so far (and
> probably never will, I always underestimate how hard things are).
> 
> Regards,
> Khaled

Hello Khaled,

That suggests that TeX--XeT is not providing the tools required to do a
decent job in XeTeX: is that a fair reading? (I'd guess that there were
reasons for the Omega/Aleph/LuaTeX move from TeX--XeT to other
approaches, but as a non-expert was not sure how to read it.)

A slightly wider question which this leads me to: do I take it that
getting some (minor) additions to XeTeX might be possible? There was
some discussion last week about a few pdfTeX primitives that might be
useful.
-- 
Joseph Wright