[XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Philip TAYLOR]

Simon Spiegel wrote:

>> From: Zdenek Wagner <zdenek.wagner at gmail.com>

>> There was a problem with polyglossia because Fran?oise Charette
>> left academia and no longer had time to maintain it. The current
>> maintainer is Arthur Reutenauer. I hope that a few volunteers could
>> help him. Microtypography is not just a matter of the microtype
>> package, the internals must offer proper primitives. I do not know
>> whether they are already available. It is not easy in some scripts,
>> eg in Indic scripts due to glyph reordering.
>
> Maybe it was a mistake to come up with examples, but this is exactly
> the kind of answer I wasn't looking for. There is always a perfectly
> valid reason why people stop working on a project or why something
> doesn't get been developed. After all, we're mainly talking about
> people doing this as an unpaid hobby. No one can't be blamed if he
> decides that wants to spend his spare time in a different manner.

I am sorry, but I profoundly disagree.  It is /vital/ that people
considering undertaking the work are aware of already known
difficulties that they may/will encounter; to ask them to start
work blindly, without a good state-of-the-art appraisal of
difficulties already known or foreseen, is extremely unreasonable
(IMHO, of course).  There is a time for debate, and a time
for action, but except in situations involving life-and-death,
intelligent and informed debate preceding action is almost always
a good thing.

Philip Taylor