Re: ConTeXt, XeTeX, ect was Re: OpenType in Windows

["George N. White III" <gnwiii@gmail.com>]

On 4/5/07, Andrea Valle <valle@di.unito.it> wrote:

> I'm a bit confused. Still can't have a clear frame of -TeX stuff.
>
> What does this exactly mean (from wikipedia)?
>
>
> XeTeX works well with both LaTeX and ConTeXt.

In the beginning there was tex, a program.  I know people who create
documents using low-level tex markup, but most people rely on a macro
package to define high-level markup. In the early days, tex was often
used with a simple macro package called "plain".  Then, for people
with nice minicomputers, Lamport wrote a macro package called LaTeX,
which was used with the same tex program and remains popular today.
ConTeXt includes yet another
macro package, but is really a system with lots of useful tools.

Along with the tex program, there was a system to create fonts, but
meanwhile other font fomats have become widely adopted, and people
have found ways to use these commercial
fonts and formats with tex, but for the most part, fonts used with tex
are separate from the system fonts and configuring a new font for use
with tex is not a simple process.

These days people rarely use the (current version of) the original tex
program because we have pdftex, which can be used to format documents
using the plain or latex or context macros to create .pdf directly as
well as .dvi files, and xetex, which can also be used with the same
list of macro packages to create .pdf or .xdv (replacement for .dvi).
The main advantage of xetex is that it supports system fonts directly.
 It is, however, new, so there could be glitches.

<http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=latex> has lots of
useful information

The xetex web site has examples and a FAQ.

-- 
George N. White III <aa056@chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia