[XeTeX] XeTeX documentation "initiative"

[Axel Kielhorn]

Am 08.09.2010 um 14:44 schrieb Khaled Hosny:

> I can't say any better, the lack of free, authoritative documentation has
> bugged me since the first day I used TeX, I couldn't even buy the books
> by then since no local book store have such titles (online book stores
> were not an option). I actually got my hand on a copy of the TeXbook for
> the first time just few weeks ago.

This depends on the level of documentation you need.

There is lshort from the mid 90s as an introduction to users.
There is the LaTeX documentation (LaTeX for authors, Modifying LaTeX, LaTeX for class and package writers, LaTeX font selection) I have printed versions of the 1995 release.
There is usually some documentation available for classes and packages.

There is documentation for fontspec, bidi and polyglossia included in TexLive.

"Creating Scholarly Multilingual Documents Using Unicode, OpenType, and XƎTEX" by David J. Perry describes how to use XeTeX with polyglossia and bidi. (Maybe this should move to CTAN when it is finished.)

What is missing is some detailed information about the specific extension of the XeTeX engine. But these should be hidden to the user by specific packages.

The version of XeTeX-notes distributed via TL 2009 is from October 2005.
There have been some significant changes since them.

I agree that we need some documentation for developer:
What is available in 
* pdftex
* luatex
* xetex
Where are the differences? (fonts, AAP vs, ICU)
Which packages disguise these differences and provide a compatible user interface?
(like graphics, fontspec)

More important is to provide some documentation for the users like:

Don't use inputenc, really we mean it.
Don't use babel and don't be afraid when the hyphenation patterns in the format still say "babel"
There is a thing called bidi, don't mess around with \beginL\endL. If something does not work ask the author of bidi, he will provide a solution.
Yes, we know that XXX is not compatible with XeTeX, get the latest version from CTAN/svn, it will work. Use this in the preamble until it is fixed in the official version.

Make lshort aware of XeTeX and luatex. It will move to the translations in time.
This will make the average user aware of these things.
(I just had a look at lshort and it needs some attention in the "TeX on Mac" chapter.)
Maybe we can write about 2 pages worth of XeLaTeX introduction and submit it for the next release? I suggest that we start a new thread "XeTeX in lshort" to discuss this.

\section{\latex\ and Unicode}

There are two implementations of \latex\ that handle Unicode input.

\subsection{\xetex}

\Xetex\ is \dots

\subsection{luatex}

Luatex is the successor of pdflatex with Unicode support. (In fact it is much more, but we will limit ourselves to the Unicode extension here.)

Axel, WTFM mode today