[XeTeX] XITS Math font - first beata

[Khaled Hosny]

On Sun, Jun 06, 2010 at 03:57:53AM +0930, Will Robertson wrote:
> On 2010-06-06 02:54:13 +0930, Taco Hoekwater <taco at elvenkind.com>
> said:
> 
> >Will Robertson wrote:
> >>On 2010-06-06 01:28:46 +0930, Eelis van der Weegen
> >><eelis at eelis.net> said:
> >>
> >>>If so, to what extent would this make XITS obsolete?
> >>
> >>Depends how good a job they do :)
> >
> >And whether the current STIX release schedule is reliable. Judging
> >from past results, it is altogether possible that v1.1 won't be
> >ready for release for half a decade yet.
> 
> 
> I'm a little sensitive to calling people out on missed deadlines...

But missing every stated deadline in 5 years (more?) is a bit special
you know. I've been missing every stated deadline for releasing my
Arabic font for a couple of years now myself, but I either state those
deadlines privately or not at all, not publish them in the front page of
my website. I appreciate all the effort put into STIX and the fact it
was eventually released under free/libre font license, but they should
have learnt a lesson from the always missed deadlines...

> anyway, if this ends up being true then they may as well commission
> Khaled to do the job for them :)

One thing that I'd like to do, giving enough incentive, is to convert
XITS into a set of Type1 and TFM fonts for use with legacy TeX engines.
It can be fairly automated; read the font in FontForge, map MATH to TeX
properties and write back a set of subset Type1 fonts and corresponding
PL files, but I don't feel like investing time in learning obsolete
technologies (Type1, TFM, PL, LaTeX math etc.), so, apart from the
potential large number of people who would benefit from it, there is no
much incentive.

-- 
 Khaled Hosny
 Arabic localiser and member of Arabeyes.org team
 Free font developer