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Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:46:56 +0100
From: tlaronde@polynum.com
To: mjkerpan@kerpan.com, Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net>
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Subject: Re: [9fans] troff book
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On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 09:10:44AM -0500, Michael Kerpan wrote:
> Plain TeX (which is what KerTeX offers by default) doesn't seem that
> complex, but it does have the disadvantage of not offering much of a
> separation between format and content. Both LaTeX and some of the more
> sophisticated troff macro packages do a better job of allowing
> "structured" editing.

What I mean is that if you know how it works, you can build your own
macro set allowing "structured editing"---that's indeed what I do:
MisTeX (my own macro set) does some apparent structuring but riding a
lot piggy-back on Plain TeX for low level details.

>=20
> Also, what level of font support is available in KerTeX and Plan 9
> troff? I'm assuming that neither offers the level of "plug and play"
> support for modern Opentype fonts that can be found in XeTeX and
> Heirloom troff, but how are they otherwise?

There are different things.

First, if one has T1 fonts, everything is here in kerTeX to be able to
use these fonts with TeX---as an example, the post-install script uses
the core PostScript fonts.

The main problem today---and you cite XeTeX not LaTeX: this means that
"traditionnal" TeX packages are not better---is that TeX uses CID in a
8bit range, and not utf-8. This is the main problem, more than writing a
program =E0 la afm2tfm(1) generating metrics information for TeX to be
able to use the fonts. TeX already uses alien fonts; but limited to an
8bit range---what are the T1 core PostScript fonts.

--=20
        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                      http://www.kergis.com/
Key fingerprint =3D 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C