XeTeX questions

XeTeX questions

[Thomas A. Schmitz]

I'm trying (once again) to find out if learning something about XeTeX  
is worth the trouble. So far, I haven't seen any compelling reason,  
but I'd like to experiment a bit more. Here are two questions I have  
run into:

1. in the wiki pages "Talk:XeTeX," there's this anonymous piece of  
wisdom:
Referencing fonts by filenames

(just a note from the XeTeX mailing list as a reminder for later)

in texmf.cnf:

OPENTYPEFONTS = .;$TEXMF/fonts/opentype//;c:/Resources/Fonts//
Then

\setromanfont{[KalligraphiaLTStd.otf]}

Is this possible or usable in ConTeXt? I have lots of OpenType fonts  
in ~/texmf/fonts/opentype, but not installed as system fonts, and  
would  like to see whether they can just be used with XeTeX as with  
vanilla pdftex. texmf.cnf is set up accordingly, but so far, I  
haven't had any success.

2. When generating the formats, texexec complained about "unknow  
control sequence" because of lines 25 and 26 in syst-xtx.tex

\setcclcuc 201C 201C 201C
\setcclcuc 201D 201D 201D

I had to comment out these lines to generate the formats (this is  
with a texlive2007 snapshot of last week and the latest ConTeXt). Is  
this a known bug?

All best

Thomas

Re: XeTeX questions

[Taco Hoekwater]

Thomas A. Schmitz wrote:
> 
> 2. When generating the formats, texexec complained about "unknow  
> control sequence" because of lines 25 and 26 in syst-xtx.tex
> 
> \setcclcuc 201C 201C 201C
> \setcclcuc 201D 201D 201D
> 
> I had to comment out these lines to generate the formats (this is  
> with a texlive2007 snapshot of last week and the latest ConTeXt). 
> Is this a known bug?

In the latest context, this is a known problem. But the TeXlive
should be ok, so ypou have me a bit worried. Are you sure it was
the latest snapshot and it did not accidentally read one of the
non-tl files?

Best,

Taco

Re: XeTeX questions

[Thomas A. Schmitz]

Uhm, maybe I wasn't quite clear: the entire TeX foundation is the  
current texlive head; I last sync'd on Jan 17. ConTeXt version is  
2007.01.18. A look at the log doesn't reveal anything unusual, here's  
the beginning and end of the log file:

This is XeTeXk, Version 3.141592-2.2-0.996 (Web2C 7.5.6) (INITEX)  21  
JAN 2007 12:27
entering extended mode
\write18 enabled.
%&-line parsing enabled.
(WARNING: translate-file "natural.tcx" ignored)
***cont-en
(/usr/local/texlive/2007/../texmf-local/tex/context/base/cont-en.tex
(/usr/local/texlive/2007/../texmf-local/tex/context/base/context.tex
(/usr/local/texlive/2007/../texmf-local/tex/context/base/syst-pln.tex

[snip]

(/usr/local/texlive/2007/../texmf-local/tex/context/base/type-spe.tex)
(/usr/local/texlive/2007/../texmf-local/tex/context/base/type-akb.tex)
(/usr/local/texlive/2007/../texmf-local/tex/context/base/type-xtx.tex))

ConTeXt  ver: 2007.01.18 12:57 MKII  fmt: 2007.1.21  int: english/ 
english

Does that sound right?

Best

Thomas

On Jan 21, 2007, at 3:11 PM, Taco Hoekwater wrote:

> In the latest context, this is a known problem. But the TeXlive
> should be ok, so ypou have me a bit worried. Are you sure it was
> the latest snapshot and it did not accidentally read one of the
> non-tl files?
>
> Best,
>
> Taco

Re: XeTeX questions

[Taco Hoekwater]

Thomas A. Schmitz wrote:
> Uhm, maybe I wasn't quite clear: the entire TeX foundation is the  
> current texlive head; I last sync'd on Jan 17. ConTeXt version is  
> 2007.01.18. A look at the log doesn't reveal anything unusual, here's  
> the beginning and end of the log file:
> 
> 
> ConTeXt  ver: 2007.01.18 12:57 MKII  fmt: 2007.1.21  int: english/ 
> english
> 
> Does that sound right?

Ah ok. 2007.01.18 is broken indeed, but that is not the 'core' one on
TeXLive, that has 2007.01.12 15:56, and I am not going to update that
one any more.

Best, Taco

Re: XeTeX questions

[Hans Hagen]

Taco Hoekwater wrote:
> Thomas A. Schmitz wrote:
>   
>> Uhm, maybe I wasn't quite clear: the entire TeX foundation is the  
>> current texlive head; I last sync'd on Jan 17. ConTeXt version is  
>> 2007.01.18. A look at the log doesn't reveal anything unusual, here's  
>> the beginning and end of the log file:
>>
>>
>> ConTeXt  ver: 2007.01.18 12:57 MKII  fmt: 2007.1.21  int: english/ 
>> english
>>
>> Does that sound right?
>>     
>
> Ah ok. 2007.01.18 is broken indeed, but that is not the 'core' one on
> TeXLive, that has 2007.01.12 15:56, and I am not going to update that
> one any more.
>   
indeed, we're now in post-texlive-2007 mode, also because we're movign forward to more drastic (internal) changes due to mkiv integration 

Hans 


-----------------------------------------------------------------
                                          Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
              Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
     tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
                                             | www.pragma-pod.nl
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Re: XeTeX questions

[Taco Hoekwater]

Taco Hoekwater wrote:
> Thomas A. Schmitz wrote:
>> 2. When generating the formats, texexec complained about "unknow  
>> control sequence" because of lines 25 and 26 in syst-xtx.tex
>>
>> \setcclcuc 201C 201C 201C
>> \setcclcuc 201D 201D 201D
>>
>> I had to comment out these lines to generate the formats (this is  
>> with a texlive2007 snapshot of last week and the latest ConTeXt). 
>> Is this a known bug?
> 
> In the latest context, this is a known problem. But the TeXlive

This bug is fixed in today's release (uploaded already)

Taco

Re: XeTeX questions

[Mojca Miklavec]

On 1/21/07, Thomas A. Schmitz wrote:
> I'm trying (once again) to find out if learning something about XeTeX
> is worth the trouble. So far, I haven't seen any compelling reason,
> but I'd like to experiment a bit more. Here are two questions I have
> run into:
>
> 1. in the wiki pages "Talk:XeTeX," there's this anonymous piece of
> wisdom:

Perhaps I forgot to log in when I've put that note to the wiki ;)

I requested that feature in XeTeX and yet: it's now implemented in
LaTeX, but not in ConTeXt. (When Adam became a father, sad times have
started for fonts in ConTeXt ;)

> Referencing fonts by filenames
>
> (just a note from the XeTeX mailing list as a reminder for later)
>
> in texmf.cnf:
>
> OPENTYPEFONTS = .;$TEXMF/fonts/opentype//;c:/Resources/Fonts//
> Then
>
> \setromanfont{[KalligraphiaLTStd.otf]}
>
> Is this possible or usable in ConTeXt? I have lots of OpenType fonts
> in ~/texmf/fonts/opentype, but not installed as system fonts, and
> would  like to see whether they can just be used with XeTeX as with
> vanilla pdftex. texmf.cnf is set up accordingly, but so far, I
> haven't had any success.

Hmmm ... you can use OpenType fonts in XeTeX in a plain-TeX-way like that:
\font\a="[KalligraphiaLTStd]" \a

But there's no high level interface for it yet. The relevant pieces
are in font-ini.tex:

%D For \XETEX\ we need to support a bit more:
%D
%D \starttyping
%D \definedfont[{cmr10}  at 40pt] test
%D \definedfont['cmss10' at 40pt] test
%D \definedfont["cmtt10" at 40pt] test
%D
%D \definedfont[{cmr10}  at 40pt] test
%D \definedfont['cmss10' at 40pt] test
%D \definedfont["cmtt10" at 40pt] test
%D
%D \definedfont["Gentium" at 40pt] test
%D \stoptyping

But one would also need \definedfont["[KalligraphiaLTStd]" at 40pt] or
a similar command (double brackets look ugly anyway) to pass the same
font name to XeTeX. If some TeXacker knows how to fix the low level
macros responsible for it ... ;)
I was silently hoping that once that Taco or Hans implement the same
feature in luatex, one of them would also fix the corresponding macros
for XeTeX. My knowledge doesn't suffice for it.

> 2. When generating the formats, texexec complained about "unknow
> control sequence" because of lines 25 and 26 in syst-xtx.tex
>
> \setcclcuc 201C 201C 201C
> \setcclcuc 201D 201D 201D
>
> I had to comment out these lines to generate the formats (this is
> with a texlive2007 snapshot of last week and the latest ConTeXt). Is
> this a known bug?

Change it to \setcclcucx or wait until Hans uploads a new version ;)

Mojca

Re: XeTeX questions

[Taco Hoekwater]

Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> 
> But one would also need \definedfont["[KalligraphiaLTStd]" at 40pt] or
> a similar command (double brackets look ugly anyway) to pass the same

Have you tried

   \definedfont[{"[KalligraphiaLTStd]" at 40pt}]

yet? Sorry, I have simply no time to toy around with XeTeX myself.

Best, Taco

Re: XeTeX questions

[Mojca Miklavec]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1110 bytes --]

On 1/21/07, Taco Hoekwater wrote:
> Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> >
> > But one would also need \definedfont["[KalligraphiaLTStd]" at 40pt] or
> > a similar command (double brackets look ugly anyway) to pass the same
>
> Have you tried
>
>    \definedfont[{"[KalligraphiaLTStd]" at 40pt}]

Hmmm ... not until you suggested it ;)

Thanks a lot! (Why on earth haven't I thought about that before?)

That basically means that now I can finally try to add a bunch of
(although ugly, but at least working) definitions to get the OpenType
version of LM version used by default when launching XeTeX. (I tried
it already and it seems to work OK, but it has to be completed and
cleaned a bit first.)

Now I only have to figure out what is happening with map files. There
were some complaints a few days ago (and at that time it worked OK on
my computer). Now, when I tried to use OpenType LM, it complains about
wrong (dvips) map files (my TeXLive installation is not the most
recent one). But I noticed that there were some dvipdfm map files for
lm added to TeXLive recently, so I hope that the problem will go away.

Mojca

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Re: XeTeX questions

[Taco Hoekwater]

Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> 
> Now I only have to figure out what is happening with map files. There
> were some complaints a few days ago (and at that time it worked OK on
> my computer). Now, when I tried to use OpenType LM, it complains about
> wrong (dvips) map files (my TeXLive installation is not the most
> recent one). But I noticed that there were some dvipdfm map files for
> lm added to TeXLive recently, so I hope that the problem will go away.

Did you read my long and confusing rant about map files? (If not, don't
worry about it). As of this morning, there should be pdftex as well as
dvipdfm map files for all of the latest tex-gyre and latin modern font
releases included on TeXLive.


Taco

Re: XeTeX questions

[Hans Hagen]

Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> On 1/21/07, Taco Hoekwater wrote:
>> Mojca Miklavec wrote:
>> >
>> > But one would also need \definedfont["[KalligraphiaLTStd]" at 40pt] or
>> > a similar command (double brackets look ugly anyway) to pass the same
>>
>> Have you tried
>>
>>    \definedfont[{"[KalligraphiaLTStd]" at 40pt}]
>
> Hmmm ... not until you suggested it ;)
>
> Thanks a lot! (Why on earth haven't I thought about that before?)
because it may work or not, depending on if the argument is passed on to 
submacros using [] as delimiter; taco knows such dirty details -)
>
> That basically means that now I can finally try to add a bunch of
> (although ugly, but at least working) definitions to get the OpenType
> version of LM version used by default when launching XeTeX. (I tried
> it already and it seems to work OK, but it has to be completed and
> cleaned a bit first.)
are these [] really needed?
>
> Now I only have to figure out what is happening with map files. There
> were some complaints a few days ago (and at that time it worked OK on
> my computer). Now, when I tried to use OpenType LM, it complains about
> wrong (dvips) map files (my TeXLive installation is not the most
> recent one). But I noticed that there were some dvipdfm map files for
> lm added to TeXLive recently, so I hope that the problem will go away.
>
see taco's mail

Hans

-- 

-----------------------------------------------------------------
                                          Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
              Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
     tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
                                             | www.pragma-pod.nl
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Re: XeTeX questions

[Taco Hoekwater]

Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> 
> But one would also need \definedfont["[KalligraphiaLTStd]" at 40pt] or
> a similar command (double brackets look ugly anyway) to pass the same

Have you tried

   \definedfont[{"[KalligraphiaLTStd]" at 40pt}]

yet? Sorry, I have simply no time to toy around with XeTeX myself.

Best, Taco

Re: XeTeX questions

[Thomas A. Schmitz]

Well don't laugh: I tried your suggestion and found that this works:

\definedfont[{{[GFSDidot] at 20pt}}]

the two pairs of braces seem to be needed. Not a pretty sight, though...

Best

Thomas

On Jan 21, 2007, at 6:52 PM, Taco Hoekwater wrote:

> Have you tried
>
>    \definedfont[{"[KalligraphiaLTStd]" at 40pt}]
>
> yet? Sorry, I have simply no time to toy around with XeTeX myself.
>
> Best, Taco
>

Re: XeTeX questions

[Hans Hagen]

Thomas A. Schmitz wrote:
> Well don't laugh: I tried your suggestion and found that this works:
>
> \definedfont[{{[GFSDidot] at 20pt}}]
>
> the two pairs of braces seem to be needed. Not a pretty sight, though...
>   

[GFSDidot]


is not a prettu sight anyway; does it fail when you don;t use those []'s?


Hans

-----------------------------------------------------------------
                                          Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
              Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
     tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
                                             | www.pragma-pod.nl
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Re: XeTeX questions

[Taco Hoekwater]

Hans Hagen wrote:
> Thomas A. Schmitz wrote:
>> Well don't laugh: I tried your suggestion and found that this works:
>>
>> \definedfont[{{[GFSDidot] at 20pt}}]
>>
>> the two pairs of braces seem to be needed. Not a pretty sight, though...
>>   
> 
> [GFSDidot]
> 
> 
> is not a prettu sight anyway; does it fail when you don;t use those []'s?
> 

It would be nicer if XeTeX would support TeX-style braces as well.
This is much less bizarre:

   \definedfont[{GFSDidot} at 20pt]

Taco

Re: XeTeX questions

[Thomas A. Schmitz]

On Jan 22, 2007, at 10:41 AM, Hans Hagen wrote:

> [GFSDidot]
>
>
> is not a prettu sight anyway; does it fail when you don;t use those  
> []'s?
>
>
> Hans

Yes, it breaks without the [].

Just came back from a day of excruciatingly boring meetings...

Thanks

Thomas

Re: XeTeX questions

[Hans Hagen]

Taco Hoekwater wrote:
> Mojca Miklavec wrote:
>   
>> But one would also need \definedfont["[KalligraphiaLTStd]" at 40pt] or
>> a similar command (double brackets look ugly anyway) to pass the same
>>     
>
> Have you tried
>
>    \definedfont[{"[KalligraphiaLTStd]" at 40pt}]
>
> yet? Sorry, I have simply no time to toy around with XeTeX myself.
>   
or 

\def\xetexfontspec#1{[#1]}

(or maybe \unexpanded\def\xetexfontspec#1{[#1]}) 


Hans 

-----------------------------------------------------------------
                                          Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
              Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
     tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
                                             | www.pragma-pod.nl
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Re: XeTeX questions

[Thomas A. Schmitz]

On Jan 21, 2007, at 5:51 PM, Mojca Miklavec wrote:

>
> I requested that feature in XeTeX and yet: it's now implemented in
> LaTeX, but not in ConTeXt. (When Adam became a father, sad times have
> started for fonts in ConTeXt ;)

Oh that's where Adam has been hanging out lately! I was wondering  
what became of him...
>
> Hmmm ... you can use OpenType fonts in XeTeX in a plain-TeX-way  
> like that:
> \font\a="[KalligraphiaLTStd]" \a
>
> But there's no high level interface for it yet. The relevant pieces
> are in font-ini.tex:
>
> %D For \XETEX\ we need to support a bit more:
> %D
> %D \starttyping
> %D \definedfont[{cmr10}  at 40pt] test
> %D \definedfont['cmss10' at 40pt] test
> %D \definedfont["cmtt10" at 40pt] test
> %D
> %D \definedfont[{cmr10}  at 40pt] test
> %D \definedfont['cmss10' at 40pt] test
> %D \definedfont["cmtt10" at 40pt] test
> %D
> %D \definedfont["Gentium" at 40pt] test
> %D \stoptyping
>
> But one would also need \definedfont["[KalligraphiaLTStd]" at 40pt] or
> a similar command (double brackets look ugly anyway) to pass the same
> font name to XeTeX. If some TeXacker knows how to fix the low level
> macros responsible for it ... ;)
> I was silently hoping that once that Taco or Hans implement the same
> feature in luatex, one of them would also fix the corresponding macros
> for XeTeX. My knowledge doesn't suffice for it.

OK, I see; thanks for clearing that up, Mojca. Since I have no  
pressing need, I guess I will leave it at that.

But since I know that you've done a lot of work on XeTeX in ConTeXt,  
I'd really like to know: what exactly can XeTeX do that would make me  
want to take a more thorough look at it? After a sometimes painful  
learning curve, I find it nowadays relatively easy to make my  
opentype fonts work in ConTeXt. I assume that once the integration of  
opentype in luatex is finished, this will be even more  
straightforward, giving us access to many opentype features. I'm just  
wondering if it makes sense to spend more time here or if the XeTeX  
project will be eaten by its own success, as it were, as most of what  
it offers becomes integrated into lua/metatex. If you can spare two  
minutes, I'd be very grateful to have your thoughts on this.

>
> Change it to \setcclcucx or wait until Hans uploads a new version ;)
>
> Mojca

Yes sorry, I saw your post on context-devel only after posting my  
question.

Thanks a lot!

Thomas

Re: XeTeX questions

[Mojca Miklavec]

On 1/21/07, Thomas A. Schmitz wrote:
>
> On Jan 21, 2007, at 5:51 PM, Mojca Miklavec wrote:
>
> >
> > I requested that feature in XeTeX and yet: it's now implemented in
> > LaTeX, but not in ConTeXt. (When Adam became a father, sad times have
> > started for fonts in ConTeXt ;)
>
> Oh that's where Adam has been hanging out lately! I was wondering
> what became of him...
> >
> > Hmmm ... you can use OpenType fonts in XeTeX in a plain-TeX-way
> > like that:
> > \font\a="[KalligraphiaLTStd]" \a
> >
> > But there's no high level interface for it yet. The relevant pieces
> > are in font-ini.tex:
> >
> > %D For \XETEX\ we need to support a bit more:
> > %D
> > %D \starttyping
> > %D \definedfont[{cmr10}  at 40pt] test
> > %D \definedfont['cmss10' at 40pt] test
> > %D \definedfont["cmtt10" at 40pt] test
> > %D
> > %D \definedfont[{cmr10}  at 40pt] test
> > %D \definedfont['cmss10' at 40pt] test
> > %D \definedfont["cmtt10" at 40pt] test
> > %D
> > %D \definedfont["Gentium" at 40pt] test
> > %D \stoptyping
> >
> > But one would also need \definedfont["[KalligraphiaLTStd]" at 40pt] or
> > a similar command (double brackets look ugly anyway) to pass the same
> > font name to XeTeX. If some TeXacker knows how to fix the low level
> > macros responsible for it ... ;)
> > I was silently hoping that once that Taco or Hans implement the same
> > feature in luatex, one of them would also fix the corresponding macros
> > for XeTeX. My knowledge doesn't suffice for it.
>
> OK, I see; thanks for clearing that up, Mojca. Since I have no
> pressing need, I guess I will leave it at that.
>
> But since I know that you've done a lot of work on XeTeX in ConTeXt,
> I'd really like to know: what exactly can XeTeX do that would make me
> want to take a more thorough look at it?

In summer I almost lost my nerves when I had to make a presentation
with Lithuanian, Turkish, Romanian, ... Vietnamese names (and had only
one night to make it ready). One letter was missing in Unicode vectors
for pdfTeX, [st]cedilla/commaaccent was problematic anyway (iwona and
lm use different letters on the same slot), for Vietnamese I needed to
redefine the font (\ifcountryisvietnamthen ... and font switching
macros seemed to have little bugs, so some specific combinations of
commands failed for basically no reason). It was a headache. (I needed
external figures and I didn't know that using them was possible in
XeTeX.)

Two other reasons why I'm sometimes using XeTeX is the ability to use
any font and the ability to use any glyph without too much troubles
(all that might be possible in pdfTeX, but even now that I potentially
know how to do that, I stil find it too cumbersome - too much work
just for the sake of being able to use a single font for a title
somewhere on a poster - too much overhelm).

Well ... another reason might be "just because it's fun to play a bit" ;)

You can do a lot more than that (typeset the most obscure scripts in
the world), but if you don't ask for it, you probably don't need it
either.

> After a sometimes painful
> learning curve, I find it nowadays relatively easy to make my
> opentype fonts work in ConTeXt.

Well ... I didn't manage to get over this (buggy windows tools -
neither lcdftypetools nor texfont worked properly) and aferwards I
didn't want to take time for it (I know that it's history, not the
future, so it makes no sense to loose time with it). But if you don't
have problems like the one described above, if you don't need "fancy
apple fonts" and if the desired fonts work OK for you, there's
probably no reason to switch.

And when talking about "should I switch to XeTeX":
The nice thing about ConTeXt is that you usually shouldn't notice the
difference at any point of the document except for possibly sligthly
different line with font definitions.

> I assume that once the integration of
> opentype in luatex is finished, this will be even more
> straightforward, giving us access to many opentype features. I'm just
> wondering if it makes sense to spend more time here

It depends on what you consider "spend more time". If I'm not counting
the time reading the XeTeX mailing list, writing feature requests or
doing minor fixes in code or on the wiki from time to time, there's
basically no additional time involved. It simply works out of the box.

> or if the XeTeX
> project will be eaten by its own success, as it were, as most of what
> it offers becomes integrated into lua/metatex. If you can spare two
> minutes, I'd be very grateful to have your thoughts on this.

Perhaps the two will integrate again once in the future ... ? (just as
Aleph & eTeX & pdfTeX have been integrated now)

It's pointless to worry about that. XeTeX has features which won't be
supported in luatex (AAT, but there are surely more of them) and some
users need those.


On 1/21/07, Taco Hoekwater wrote:
> Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> >
> > Now I only have to figure out what is happening with map files. There
> > were some complaints a few days ago (and at that time it worked OK on
> > my computer). Now, when I tried to use OpenType LM, it complains about
> > wrong (dvips) map files (my TeXLive installation is not the most
> > recent one). But I noticed that there were some dvipdfm map files for
> > lm added to TeXLive recently, so I hope that the problem will go away.
>
> Did you read my long and confusing rant about map files?

I did. But at that time it worked fine here ;)

> (If not, don't
> worry about it). As of this morning, there should be pdftex as well as
> dvipdfm map files for all of the latest tex-gyre and latin modern font
> releases included on TeXLive.

Yes, I've noticed. I hope that it will work without any problems.

Mojca

Re: XeTeX questions

[Thomas A. Schmitz]

On Jan 21, 2007, at 11:59 PM, Mojca Miklavec wrote:

>
> In summer I almost lost my nerves when I had to make a presentation
> with Lithuanian, Turkish, Romanian, ... Vietnamese names (and had only
> one night to make it ready). One letter was missing in Unicode vectors
> for pdfTeX, [st]cedilla/commaaccent was problematic anyway (iwona and
> lm use different letters on the same slot), for Vietnamese I needed to
> redefine the font (\ifcountryisvietnamthen ... and font switching
> macros seemed to have little bugs, so some specific combinations of
> commands failed for basically no reason). It was a headache. (I needed
> external figures and I didn't know that using them was possible in
> XeTeX.)

OK, I see where XeTeX has its strong points. And I can certainly  
agree: if you want unusual glyphs that are not part of a more-or-less  
standard encoding, that can be a PITA.

>
> Two other reasons why I'm sometimes using XeTeX is the ability to use
> any font and the ability to use any glyph without too much troubles
> (all that might be possible in pdfTeX, but even now that I potentially
> know how to do that, I stil find it too cumbersome - too much work
> just for the sake of being able to use a single font for a title
> somewhere on a poster - too much overhelm).
>
> Well ... another reason might be "just because it's fun to play a  
> bit" ;)
>
> You can do a lot more than that (typeset the most obscure scripts in
> the world), but if you don't ask for it, you probably don't need it
> either.

Yes, I was just wondering how much time I should spend on ``playing a  
bit.''

>
> Well ... I didn't manage to get over this (buggy windows tools -
> neither lcdftypetools nor texfont worked properly) and aferwards I
> didn't want to take time for it (I know that it's history, not the
> future, so it makes no sense to loose time with it). But if you don't
> have problems like the one described above, if you don't need "fancy
> apple fonts" and if the desired fonts work OK for you, there's
> probably no reason to switch.
>
> And when talking about "should I switch to XeTeX":
> The nice thing about ConTeXt is that you usually shouldn't notice the
> difference at any point of the document except for possibly sligthly
> different line with font definitions.
>
>> I assume that once the integration of
>> opentype in luatex is finished, this will be even more
>> straightforward, giving us access to many opentype features. I'm just
>> wondering if it makes sense to spend more time here
>
> It depends on what you consider "spend more time". If I'm not counting
> the time reading the XeTeX mailing list, writing feature requests or
> doing minor fixes in code or on the wiki from time to time, there's
> basically no additional time involved. It simply works out of the box.
>

Well, that depends on your needs: the only ``exotic'' script that I  
use on a regular basis is polytonic Greek, and this works indeed out  
of the box (very impressive), but in my quick tests, failed to work  
as soon as I added the mapping=tex-text command to the font. But your  
post has been immensely helpful, Mojca. Thanks for your time, I  
really see where XeTeX is useful, but I also see that it probably  
won't do a lot for me.

Best

Thomas

Re: XeTeX questions

[Hans Hagen]

Thomas A. Schmitz wrote:
>
> But since I know that you've done a lot of work on XeTeX in ConTeXt,  
> I'd really like to know: what exactly can XeTeX do that would make me  
> want to take a more thorough look at it? After a sometimes painful  
> learning curve, I find it nowadays relatively easy to make my  
> opentype fonts work in ConTeXt. I assume that once the integration of  
> opentype in luatex is finished, this will be even more  
> straightforward, giving us access to many opentype features. I'm just  
> wondering if it makes sense to spend more time here or if the XeTeX  
> project will be eaten by its own success, as it were, as most of what  
> it offers becomes integrated into lua/metatex. If you can spare two  
> minutes, I'd be very grateful to have your thoughts on this.
>   
fonts is more than definitions; esp a the level of supporting features and runtime manipulating fonts, xetex and luatex will undoubtely differ; also, xetex uses external font libraries, while luatex does things internaly and under user/macro conytrol (with defaults); due to the nature of fonts, both systems will share characteristics ... the future will learn; from context's point of view ... we will provide a high level interface so users will probably not notice the gory details 


Hans 

-----------------------------------------------------------------
                                          Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
              Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
     tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
                                             | www.pragma-pod.nl
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Re: XeTeX questions

[Thomas A. Schmitz]

On Jan 22, 2007, at 12:17 AM, Hans Hagen wrote:

> fonts is more than definitions; esp a the level of supporting  
> features and runtime manipulating fonts, xetex and luatex will  
> undoubtely differ; also, xetex uses external font libraries, while  
> luatex does things internaly and under user/macro conytrol (with  
> defaults); due to the nature of fonts, both systems will share  
> characteristics ... the future will learn; from context's point of  
> view ... we will provide a high level interface so users will  
> probably not notice the gory details
>
>
> Hans

That would be the best of all worlds... Just give us some Mk IV files  
to play with soonish...

Thomas

Re: XeTeX questions

[Hans Hagen]

Mojca Miklavec wrote:
>
> Hmmm ... you can use OpenType fonts in XeTeX in a plain-TeX-way like that:
> \font\a="[KalligraphiaLTStd]" \a
>   
hm, weird syntax
> But there's no high level interface for it yet. The relevant pieces
> are in font-ini.tex:
>
> %D For \XETEX\ we need to support a bit more:
> %D
> %D \starttyping
> %D \definedfont[{cmr10}  at 40pt] test
> %D \definedfont['cmss10' at 40pt] test
> %D \definedfont["cmtt10" at 40pt] test
> %D
> %D \definedfont[{cmr10}  at 40pt] test
> %D \definedfont['cmss10' at 40pt] test
> %D \definedfont["cmtt10" at 40pt] test
> %D
> %D \definedfont["Gentium" at 40pt] test
> %D \stoptyping
>
> But one would also need \definedfont["[KalligraphiaLTStd]" at 40pt] or
> a similar command (double brackets look ugly anyway) to pass the same
> font name to XeTeX. If some TeXacker knows how to fix the low level
> macros responsible for it ... ;)
>   
won't work ... context cannot handle nested [] without much trickery and 
i' really dislike that syntax

> I was silently hoping that once that Taco or Hans implement the same
> feature in luatex, one of them would also fix the corresponding macros
> for XeTeX. My knowledge doesn't suffice for it.
>   
why are the nested [] needed

(btw, later this year i may come up with an extension to the font 
definition macros more suitable for open type; in that case we can 
convert to xetex syntax behind the screens)
>   
>> 2. When generating the formats, texexec complained about "unknow
>> control sequence" because of lines 25 and 26 in syst-xtx.tex
>>
>> \setcclcuc 201C 201C 201C
>> \setcclcuc 201D 201D 201D
>>
>> I had to comment out these lines to generate the formats (this is
>> with a texlive2007 snapshot of last week and the latest ConTeXt). Is
>> this a known bug?
>>     
the enco-utf file is now shared between xetex and luatex in mkii mode; 
luatex in mkiv mode does things differently
>
> Change it to \setcclcucx or wait until Hans uploads a new version ;)
>   
done, but no upload yet

Hans

-- 

-----------------------------------------------------------------
                                          Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
              Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
     tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
                                             | www.pragma-pod.nl
-----------------------------------------------------------------