[XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Sat, 4 Aug 2012 09:38:44 +0200 schrieb Paul Isambert:


>> But there are also political issues: LuaTeX is developed by a
>> team focusing on ConTeXt. LaTeX users will always be neglected,
>> at least that is the feeling I have (Taco is very kind and
>> helpful but he is paid for a specific task, and LaTeX is not
>> part of it).
 
> I thought somebody would answer to that but nobody did, so (sorry to add
> to this already too long thread, all the more as I won't even mention
> XeTeX):
 
> Two members of the ``core'' LuaTeX team (Taco and Hans) are indeed two
> main ConTeXt developers (and even original author, in Hans's case), but
> I don't think you can say LuaTeX development focuses on ConTeXt (plus
> Hartmut, the third member, is a LaTeX user, as far as I know). I'd
> rather say that at most LuaTeX development may be driven by the needs
> of ConTeXt developers, but that doesn't mean it benefits only to ConTeXt;
> also, given ConTeXt's high standards, I think it's only for the best.
> And the specific task Taco is paid for does not include LaTeX, but it
> does not include ConTeXt either.

Well if you look only at the actual binary then yes your are right:
it is not focused on context. But the handling of fonts is a core
feature of a typesetting system. No user of a typesetting system
would consider it to be complete if it can't handle standard fonts.
So even if in luatex the font loader (including all the code needed
to generate caches) is in external lua-files, it should nevertheless
be considered to be part of "the luatex binary". It shouldn't
delegate font handling to the formats.  


-- 
Ulrike Fischer 
http://www.troubleshooting-tex.de/