Re: Arabic typesetting in Plain TeX over LuaTeX

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

Ilda Khaki wrote:

>> 1. Mixed-up categories: Plain TeX is a macropackage, luaTeX is an engine.
> 
> 
> No. It is not. When someone uses Plain TeX in an engine, he would say Plain
> TeX over the engine-name. It seems you know very little about Plain TeX.

that's just a side effect of the engines dafaulting to some plain name 
i.e. tex->plain.fmt, pdftex->pdftex.fmt, luatex->luatex.fmt, etc

so, although luatex can use a plain.fmt format, in practice it would be 
luatex.fmt (now that we have engine subpaths a non-clashing plain.fmt 
would be posible but that's all dependent of the cnf file)

concerning plain itself ... i guess that in most macropackages you can 
use plain-like macros; it would be interesting to know what 
functionality plain offers that macro packages don't provide too; the 
main advantage of plain is that it's small and very stable, but any 
luatex related font code will make plain way bigger, slower and less stable

> This is a sample file, I am looking for.
> 
> %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
> \pagedir TRT \bodydir TRT \textdir TRT \pardir TRT
> \font\test=zar.ttf scaled\magstep0
> 
> هل انت کیقک؟
> \end
> %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
> 
> But I do not know how to define the font so that Arabic alphabets are not
> isolated.

it would probably also need something

\input a-lot-of-extra-lua-code

\font\test=zar.ttf[plus enabling arabic features] scaled\magstep0

and probably more since plain tex is meant as basis for typesetting an 
english book and not arabic

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                                           Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
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