[XeTeX] XeTeX in lshort

[Axel Kielhorn]

Am 30.09.2010 um 02:39 schrieb Andy Lin:

> lshort needs to be updated, not just because it's missing sections on
> Unicode and XeTeX. It's also working under the assumption that people
> will *need* to use the command line in order to process a document.
> This should be a concern to anyone who's looked at it recently.

You are right.
Even Mac users don't like to go to the command line.

> And while lshort is a very important document, I'm not convinced that
> it's necessarily the right place to go into a detailed explanation
> about XeTeX or Unicode. Considering the usage that lshort assumes
> (math),

lshort already covers writing in different languages:
Portuguese, French, German, Korean, Greek Cyrillic languages, Mongolian.
Writing in these languages may be simplified by using Unicode.
About 30 of 110 pages are math, everything else is general purpose.

> XeTeX and Unicode introduce relatively little improvement (and
> indeed, even with Unicode math support, I can see reasons why you'd
> stay with LaTeX for the time being).

There are many documents available in English.
AFAIK lshort is the only document translated to many languages:

lshort-bulgarian/
lshort-chinese/
lshort-dutch/
lshort-english/
lshort-finnish/
lshort-french/
lshort-german/
lshort-italian/
lshort-japanese/
lshort-korean/
lshort-mongol/
lshort-persian/
lshort-polish/
lshort-portuguese/
lshort-russian/
lshort-slovak/
lshort-slovenian/
lshort-spanish/
lshort-thai/
lshort-turkish/
lshort-ukr/
lshort-vietnamese/

Thus any addition to lshort will reach many people who can actually profit from XeTeX (via the translations).

> The attractiveness to using LaTeX to exchange documents (in the past,
> and to a large extent, even now) is that you can be sure that the
> source file can be read by your computer, even if you don't have the
> same fonts or language support (EOL and codepage issues aside). XeTeX
> introduces many stumbling blocks to this portability, even as it
> solves others.

There are quiet a lot of opentype fonts included with TeXLive (and probably MikTeX).
May I need to stress that anything not provided by TL may be less portable.

> Although the switch to Unicode ensures that you don't
> run into codepage problems, you now have problems with individual
> computer not being able to display certain scripts because the system
> fonts don't support it.

When you need these characters, you will have a font that includes them.
Otherwise you wouldn't need the in XeLaTeX.

> And although OpenType fonts provide you with
> real small caps and fancy contextual alternates, you can only compile
> the document on another computer if it also has the fonts you use.
> These are all things which I think are outside of the scope of lshort
> and concern a different audience (people who need multilingual
> support, OpenType feature support, not to mention people who should
> probably be using ConTeXT instead).

I consider lshort an introduction showing the basics.
You can write LGC, you can write RTL, you can write CJK.
Now go to the respective manual and read how to do it.

Earlier this year I read an article by a long time LaTeX user, where he complained about the difficulties of writing a LGC document. He simply didn't know about XeTeX.

My idea is to show:
You can do this, and it is easy (once you figured out how to input Unicode characters.)

If you need this, move on to ...

> A short introduction to XeTeX should include discussion of editors,
> because not all popular editors support Unicode.

Both do (On Mac: All three do:-)

> TeXworks and TeXmaker are very good candidates for inclusion because they're easy to use and are cross-platform.

I will add a short note about TeXworks since it is supplied by TL (for Windows and MacOS).

> I've run several LaTeX workshops for the linguistics department at my
> university, and most people go straight back to Word because seeing
> \emph{} makes them physically uncomfortable. The few that stay with
> it, they need a little guidance and a lot of information. This is
> where a document like an xshort would come in.
> 
> A few suggestions
> -I would like to see mention of RTL and CJK support in the XeTeX
> section, the is the main reason why I use XeTeX over (pdf)LaTeX. I'd
> also change "in the past" to "in regular LaTeX" or something similar.

I will extend the paragraph about RTL and mention CJK.
Both, pdfLaTeX and XeLaTeX are regular LaTeX.

> A current user of LaTeX is unlikely to read lshort.

That depends on the marketing:
Now with improved Unicode support!
Use your system fonts, including C*mic S*ans!
25% of for buyers of the previous version (\tiny receipt required)!

> -I don't think the section on old style numerals or historical
> ligatures is necessary,

But I need them for my paperback novel. Lining numerals in the body text are just rude:-)

> but I would keep the Polish ligature example.

I would like to see more examples like this.
I only know it, because it was shown in the presentation of the LM fonts in 2004.
(The main problem at that time was the 8 bit encoding that required different encodings depending on the document language.)

> -under "How do I get OpenType fonts", I would add "OpenType fonts are
> included with Windows (XP or newer), and all versions of OS X."

That would be unportable.

> -I would also mention AAT fonts for OS X

I'd rather not. AAT is not portable.

> The tl;dr version: I agree with the brevity of the current proposed
> extension to lshort, but not some of its contents. I do like that it
> links to an external resource rather than try to cover a range of
> topics which readers of lshort may not be interested in.

I haven't written the bibliography entries yet. They will contain links to:

fontspec
polyglossia
bidi

I know nothing about
xepersian
arabxetex
xeCJK
zhspacing
but will mention that they exist.

The main problem is that lshort is a latin1 document, thus it is almost impossible (yes, there is arabtex and CJK) to show examples.

Axel