[XeTeX] Re: [MacTeX] XeTeX

[Jonathan Kew]

On 15 Apr 2004, at 9:14 am, Ross Moore wrote:

> Given the current spurt of interest in XeTeX,
> to the exclusion of the other Mac TeX applications,
> maybe we should start a separate list to carry on
> with further discussions and reports from testing.
>
> What does everyone think about this ?
>

I don't mind either way. I suspect the "spurt" will die down once we're 
past the initial flurry of problem reports and wishes, and interest in 
other systems will revive as people see that standard pdfTeX and 
friends are better tools for all those people who want to run 
completely standard, portable TeX documents.

XeTeX isn't attempting to "compete" in the standard TeX world. I hope 
it will be able to process standard documents using standard fonts 
correctly (and clearly it's not there yet!), it will never be as 
efficient as pdfTeX for that purpose. But its purpose is to provide a 
high-end typesetting tool that works easily with Unicode and AAT fonts, 
and in particular with complex scripts. To achieve that, it sacrifices 
platform independence and source document portability. And for many 
users, that's a price not worth paying, I realize that.

Having said that, I'm delighted to see the level of interest in this, 
and hope that we can make it into something that works smoothly and 
well.

Jonathan

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