Difference between MKII, XeTeX and MKIV

Difference between MKII, XeTeX and MKIV

[Cecil Westerhof]

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When installing minimals you have MKII, XeTeX and MKIV. I understand that
you should normally use MKIV, but when are the other two used?

-- 
Cecil Westerhof

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Re: Difference between MKII, XeTeX and MKIV

[Marco]

On 2011-03-14 Cecil Westerhof <cldwesterhof@gmail.com> wrote:

> When installing minimals you have MKII, XeTeX and MKIV. I understand that
> you should normally use MKIV, but when are the other two used?

MKII can be used either with pdftex or xetex (as you wish, compare
advantages/disadvantages). MKIV can only be used with luatex.

You have to differ between ConTeXt »versions« (mkii, mkiv) and TeX backends
(pdftex, xetex, luatex).


Marco


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Re: Difference between MKII, XeTeX and MKIV

[Cecil Westerhof]

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2011/3/14 Marco <netuse@lavabit.com>

> On 2011-03-14 Cecil Westerhof <cldwesterhof@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > When installing minimals you have MKII, XeTeX and MKIV. I understand that
> > you should normally use MKIV, but when are the other two used?
>
> MKII can be used either with pdftex or xetex (as you wish, compare
> advantages/disadvantages). MKIV can only be used with luatex.
>
> You have to differ between ConTeXt »versions« (mkii, mkiv) and TeX backends
> (pdftex, xetex, luatex).
>

And where do I find the advantages/disadvantages? Or can I just always use
MKIV?

-- 
Cecil Westerhof

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Re: Difference between MKII, XeTeX and MKIV

[Marco]

On 2011-03-14 Cecil Westerhof <cldwesterhof@gmail.com> wrote:

> 2011/3/14 Marco <netuse@lavabit.com>
> 
> > On 2011-03-14 Cecil Westerhof <cldwesterhof@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > When installing minimals you have MKII, XeTeX and MKIV. I understand
> > > that you should normally use MKIV, but when are the other two used?
> >
> > MKII can be used either with pdftex or xetex (as you wish, compare
> > advantages/disadvantages). MKIV can only be used with luatex.
> >
> > You have to differ between ConTeXt »versions« (mkii, mkiv) and TeX
> > backends (pdftex, xetex, luatex).
> >
> 
> And where do I find the advantages/disadvantages?

Wikipedia, google, information source of your slightest distrust.
Short and incomplete:

pdftex:
+ protrusion, font expansion
- fonts are a nightmare

xetex:
+ system fonts are easily accessible
- no protrusion, no font expansion

luatex:
+ protrusion, font expansion, easy access of system fonts, scripting language
  included, fast with mplib
- in general much slower


> Or can I just always use MKIV?

Yes, you can.


Marco


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Re: Difference between MKII, XeTeX and MKIV

[Hans Hagen]

On 14-3-2011 7:26, Cecil Westerhof wrote:
> 2011/3/14 Marco<netuse@lavabit.com>
>
>> On 2011-03-14 Cecil Westerhof<cldwesterhof@gmail.com>  wrote:
>>
>>> When installing minimals you have MKII, XeTeX and MKIV. I understand that
>>> you should normally use MKIV, but when are the other two used?
>>
>> MKII can be used either with pdftex or xetex (as you wish, compare
>> advantages/disadvantages). MKIV can only be used with luatex.
>>
>> You have to differ between ConTeXt »versions« (mkii, mkiv) and TeX backends
>> (pdftex, xetex, luatex).
>>
>
> And where do I find the advantages/disadvantages? Or can I just always use
> MKIV?

As already mentioned speed depends on the kind of document. In general 
context runs slower with xetex and luatex if only because these are 
unicode engines while pdftex is 8 bit.

Occasionally i do speed tests and it also depends on the operating 
system, file caching etc. For luatex the size of the cpu cache also 
matters. Although pdftex/mkiv is always faster unless on eused metapoist 
in which case mkiv is a clear winner (the metafun manual runs in tens of 
seconds in mkiv but takes many minutes in mkii.  Comparing xetex/mkii 
and luatex/mkiv is difficult as xetex also pipes its output to a dvi 
backend. On some tests mkiv is faster, on some others mkii but I must 
admit that i only tested simple document.

On a raw simple document, pdftex can be twice as fast as xetex or 
luatex. The more lua driven features are used, the slower mkiv becomes 
but in general it does a better job then.

Anyhow .. only luatex/mkiv will evolve so best stick to that.

Hans

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Re: Difference between MKII, XeTeX and MKIV

[Mojca Miklavec]

On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 19:44, Marco wrote:
> On 2011-03-14 Cecil Westerhof wrote:
>> 2011/3/14 Marco wrote:
>> > On 2011-03-14 Cecil Westerhof wrote:
>> >
>> > > When installing minimals you have MKII, XeTeX and MKIV. I understand
>> > > that you should normally use MKIV, but when are the other two used?

They are mostly relicts of the past which still happen to be
supported. (But if ConTeXt was written from scratch, there would
probably be no support for them.)


I often write mathematical-oriented papers that need zero tweaking
with OpenType fonts, complex layouts or that could benefit from lua
scripting. I compile those randomly with MKII and MKIV, if nothing
else to check for differences, or if there is a problem in MKIV, I can
always use MKII is a fallback. MKII hardly ever changes, so it is
slightly more reliable in some cases, but it is very limited in
comparison to MKIV.

I use XeTeX mostly when I need OpenType fonts and something in MKIV
breaks. XeTeX has some advantages in out-of-the-box support for exotic
scripts (which I don't use), but many of its features are not
supported in ConTeXt at the high-level user interface. In general,
XeTeX is the least supported engine in ConTeXt community. In contrary,
for LaTeX users XeTeX is becoming the mainstream engine to use (best
supported by active developers).

>> > MKII can be used either with pdftex or xetex (as you wish, compare
>> > advantages/disadvantages). MKIV can only be used with luatex.
>> >
>> > You have to differ between ConTeXt »versions« (mkii, mkiv) and TeX
>> > backends (pdftex, xetex, luatex).
>> >
>>
>> And where do I find the advantages/disadvantages?
>
> Wikipedia, google, information source of your slightest distrust.
> Short and incomplete:
>
> pdftex:
> + protrusion, font expansion
> - fonts are a nightmare
(you should have put three minuses there :)
+ stability

> xetex:
> + system fonts are easily accessible
> - no protrusion, no font expansion

I never tried to use them, but I thought that Han The Thanh [please
add the accents] added that to XeTeX semi-recently
(http://scripts.sil.org/svn-view/xetex/TRUNK/, the last comment 8
months ago: "merged microtype branch to trunk").

> luatex:
> + protrusion, font expansion, easy access of system fonts, scripting language
>  included, fast with mplib
> - in general much slower

... depending on whether "in general" includes metapost or not. A
speed factor of ten (faster) is nothing unusual for luatex when many
metapost graphics come into play.

++ better support

>> Or can I just always use MKIV?
>
> Yes, you can.

Definitely. You don't need to bother, just stick to MKIV as long as it
works fine for you.

Mojca
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Re: Difference between MKII, XeTeX and MKIV

[Marco]

On 2011-03-14 Mojca Miklavec <mojca.miklavec.lists@gmail.com> wrote:

> > xetex:
> > + system fonts are easily accessible
> > - no protrusion, no font expansion
> 
> I never tried to use them, but I thought that Han The Thanh [please
> add the accents] added that to XeTeX semi-recently
> (http://scripts.sil.org/svn-view/xetex/TRUNK/, the last comment 8
> months ago: "merged microtype branch to trunk").

I don't follow xetex development any more, so my information was outdated.
Thanks for the correction.

> > luatex:
> > + protrusion, font expansion, easy access of system fonts, scripting
> > language included, fast with mplib
> > - in general much slower
> 
> ... depending on whether "in general" includes metapost or not. A
> speed factor of ten (faster) is nothing unusual for luatex when many
> metapost graphics come into play.

I totally agree. But Cecil mentioned in another thread: »My document is mostly
text.« Even if a few mp graphics are involved luatex is still noticeably
slower.


Marco


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Re: Difference between MKII, XeTeX and MKIV

[mathew]

On Mar 14, 2011, at 16:49, Marco wrote:
> I totally agree. But Cecil mentioned in another thread: »My document is mostly
> text.« Even if a few mp graphics are involved luatex is still noticeably
> slower.

I look at it from the perspective that the last time I used TeX, my 8MHz Atari ST took several seconds to process each page. And then it took several seconds per page for the previewer to show me the DVI. And I couldn't do anything else on the machine while it was working.

My way of working now is that I keep a short scratchpad document in TeXworks, and use it to sort out my formatting and macros, taking advantage of the live preview. When I'm done, I copy the definitions into my actual working document, which I edit in vim. I only typeset the entire working document once or twice an hour, if that; vim catches syntax errors. So if LuaTex takes a few seconds longer to do the typesetting, it's completely unimportant.


mathew
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Re: Difference between MKII, XeTeX and MKIV

[Hans Hagen]

On 18-3-2011 3:54, mathew wrote:
> On Mar 14, 2011, at 16:49, Marco wrote:
>> I totally agree. But Cecil mentioned in another thread: »My document is mostly
>> text.« Even if a few mp graphics are involved luatex is still noticeably
>> slower.
>
> I look at it from the perspective that the last time I used TeX, my 8MHz Atari ST took several seconds to process each page. And then it took several seconds per page for the previewer to show me the DVI. And I couldn't do anything else on the machine while it was working.
>
> My way of working now is that I keep a short scratchpad document in TeXworks, and use it to sort out my formatting and macros, taking advantage of the live preview. When I'm done, I copy the definitions into my actual working document, which I edit in vim. I only typeset the entire working document once or twice an hour, if that; vim catches syntax errors. So if LuaTex takes a few seconds longer to do the typesetting, it's completely unimportant.

it's no problem to get a 250 pages per second throughput in mkiv but as 
soon as you add more interesting things to a page work needs to be done 
and that takes runtime

on the average i get some 10-15 pages per second for documents of normal 
complexity on my (by now) 5 year old laptop that i use for development 
which is quite ok (mk.pdf: 10 pps, hybrid.pdf: 11 pps, cld-mkiv: 15 pps)

Hans


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