[XeTeX] Status of XeTeX on non-MacOSX platforms?

[Bruno Voisin]

Le 30 juil. 05 à 17:32, Sivan Toledo a écrit :
> I would like to ask about the prospects/plans/status of XeTeX for  
> platforms other than MacOS X.
>
> I read carefully the paper on XeTeX for IUC27, and I seems to me  
> that MacOS specific code is used in only 3 places in XeTeX:
> 1. In handling ATSUI fonts and words typeset in these fonts,
> 2. XeTeX calls the ATSUI bidirectional algorithm.
> 3. XeTeX uses a MacOS-specific API to render the document into a  
> PDF file
>
> I think that item (1) can simply be dropped from non-MacOS builds,  
> and item (2) can probably be replaced by either ICU (I think it  
> includes a version of the algorithm) or freebidi, a GPL library  
> implementing the algorithm.
>
> Item (3) is probably the most difficult to replace, mostly because  
> of the need to subset and download OpenType fonts (both TTF and  
> OTF) in the PDF file. Up to this issue, the PDF generation can  
> probably use the pdfTeX generator.
Please don't make XeTeX crippled (i.e. slower, less efficient, less  
OS X-compliant, etc.) by attempting to make it cross-platform at all  
cost. In particular, regarding (2) and (3) above, please don't  
replace any OS X algorithm by another cross-platform one when running  
on OS X; or instead, possibly, make it so that XeTeX tests whether is  
is running on OS X and, if so, switches to the OS X algorithms/ 
libraries automatically.

Personally I think that, when on an OS platform, the OS libraries,  
optimized by the OS engineers for this OS, should always be used when  
they exist for a given functionality.

Bruno Voisin