[XeTeX] The future of XeTeX

[BPJ]

On 2012-07-30 17:15, Dominik Wujastyk wrote:
> Not long ago, Jonathan noted about a particular problem that,
>
>>
>> The best chance of fixing this will be if xetex is updated some day to use
>> the new harfbuzz engine, but there's no immediate prospect of that, I'm
>> afraid.
>
>
> Like most of us on this list, I use XeTeX, value it enormously, and depend
> on it for day-to-day work.  But it's becoming clear to me that the
> long-term maintenance of XeTeX is not assured.
>
> Can we discuss this?

It says everywhere that luatex supports UTF-8, yet my (very
limited) understanding is that Unicode string support in *lua*
is entirely dependent on third party additions.  How does this
affect what one can do with lua in luatex?

I ask because I currently use xetex + perltex for some things.

/bpj