Re: How could a typesetting system be today?

[Henning Hraban Ramm <hraban@fiee.net>]

Am 2008-05-30 um 14:31 schrieb Idris Samawi Hamid:
>> There is no denying that many advanced features in InDesign are
>> missing in TeX(like) related software. What's more, the
>> internationalization of InDesign is better.
>
> Can you give a precise list of the features contained in InDesign  
> that are
> missing in (lua)TeX or which TeX does not support well?


- much faster (i.e. I don't need to wait for several TeX runs e.g. if  
I need to check if some tweak fixed my page breaking)
- optical (vs. metrical) kerning
- a GUI ;-) and thus layout by "let's try how it looks"
- layout definition (I struggle with ConTeXt's \setuplayout every time)
- better page breaking constraints (you can define in your style  
sheets "keep n lines together" and "keep this together with the next  
paragraph)
- PDF/X output
- color profile conversions
- image processing features like crop paths, feathered edges, drop  
shadow (in ConTeXt I need to prepare such in Photoshop in the right  
size - but I guess it would be possible to write a module that uses  
ImageMagick to achieve something similar)

Problems in TeX *and* InDesign:
- Unicode handling (composed and decomposed UTF-8 with or without BOM,  
UTF-16, different line endings)

Working with InDesign as a developer I know that TeX's documentation  
is far better. Adobe's developer docs (e.g. on API, XML format,  
InDesign tagged text) are incomplete and errorneous.

I don't think you can call the one or other "better" or "more  
advanced", it's just a different approach, and I choose the right tool  
for every project. (I.e. I only use TeX if I need the same content in  
different versions, if I can automate something or for books.) But the  
layout applications like InDesign (there's still also ugly old  
QuarkXPress, coming-of-age Scribus and some others) have learned a lot  
of the former domains of TeX, like registers and toc generation.

There are still some areas where you need a programmable system, even  
trivia like chapter dependant running titles (in ConTeXt: headertexts).


Greetlings from Lake Constance!
Hraban
---
http://www.fiee.net/texnique/
http://wiki.contextgarden.net
https://www.cacert.org (I'm an assurer)

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