[XeTeX] Xetex in lao (another try)

[Mojca Miklavec]

On Sun, Sep 22, 2013 at 2:29 PM, Robert M Campbell wrote:
> ICU's to be released version supports Lao as a result of Brian's and others'
> help. The current dictionary is at
> http://code.google.com/p/lao-dictionary/source/browse/.
>
> What needs to happen in order to get Xetex working with this?

Dear Robert,

XeTeX needs to be linked against the version of ICU which supports
Lao, so you basically need a new binary for XeTeX.

As for the official TeX Live release this won't happen before TeX Live
2014 gets released (the version 2013 came out recently), but if you
can wait until the next ICU release or if you could make a patch
against ICU 51.1 to include support for Lao (see
http://tug.org/svn/texlive/trunk/Build/source/libs/icu/; which would
actually be the best because you could still report problems before
the next ICU gets out), all that's needed is that someone compiles the
binary from current TeX Live sources and then you could set Lao locale
which should break the words automatically. If you have problems
compiling it yourself, there should be no problem to ask someone to
send you the appropriate binary.

One thing I don't know is whether ICU only breaks between words or
also between syllables. (If it only breaks between words you would
still need hyphenation patterns. If it breaks between syllables as
well, you don't need anything else.)

Mojca