Re: XeTeX and/or LuaTeX?

[Mojca Miklavec <mojca.miklavec.lists@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 11:29 AM, J.A.J. Pater wrote:
> I'm was planning to write my master thesis in XeLaTeX until I
> discovered that ConTeXt can use the XeTeX engine.
> I need to use a lot of Hebrew - so Right to Left typing - and some
> linguistic glyphs and stuff.
>
> But from the wiki I understand there are still some issues with ConTeXt's
> XeTeX-awareness.
>
> Like the bookmarks "may result in some strangeness in certain documents"
> Can someone tell me what kind of strangeness?

Do not worry about bookmarks. You can probably ask Hans to fix it if
it doesn't work properly.

> And XeTeX can't use "certain specials and other types of features"
> Can someone tell me what kind of "specials and types of features"?

I would not bother too much. One of the differences is that XeLaTeX
has very good high-level support for changing fonts. That one is
missing, but you can still do everything you need. In particular, if
you are writing your thesis, those few additional lines that you might
need for properly setting the font should not be a problem.

XeLaTeX also has some support for OpenType math, but you don't need that.

> And now on this list there is a lot of talk about LuaTeX and Mark IV.
> So I wonder: Is it possible to use MarkIV and XeTeX engine at the same time?
> And if not, why should (or shouldn't) I use MarkIV over XeTeX?

Minus of Mark IV: it's a bit unstable; problems are fixed quickly, but
it's a bit annoying if your thesis doesn't compile one hour or day
before the deadline (when you do the final run before you print the
document and of course you have no backup of PDF). You can make sure
that this doesn't happen by keeping two versions of ConTeXt installed
just in case (one that you update and one that you don't).

Plus of Mark IV: it has a very powerful programming language in the
background. Fun to use (which could just as well be a minus if you
become interested in playing with it or in fixing the problems instead
of writing your thesis :) :) :) Very well supported.

In case that you don't need advanced MKIV features, you can, at least
in theory, use the same source to typeset the document with both XeTeX
and LuaTeX. For documents that are not too complex this is what I
usually do. If I stumble across a problem in one engine, there's still
a chance that the other engine will work properly.

Mojca
___________________________________________________________________________________
If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
webpage  : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net
archive  : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/
wiki     : http://contextgarden.net
___________________________________________________________________________________