
XeTeX: A modern LaTeX with proper OpenType and Unicode support - nailer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XeTeX
======
teilo
It was because of the poor font support in LaTeX that I gave up trying to use
it many years back.

[And without fail, every time I make this claim, I get piled on by LaTeX die-
hards -- please don't bother. It's a total PITA to get the fonts of your
choice working properly in LaTeX. It SHOULD be as easy as referencing a font
file or dropping a font in a directory, but it's not.]

XeTeX looks awesome. Finally, full, easy, natural OTF support through
Freetype. Even AAT support on a Mac! Looks like I'm jumping back into the
world of TeX.

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patrickg
I suggest having a look at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LuaTeX> It is still
in beta, but once the power of LuaTeX is unleashed, it will be the only used
TeX engine (in two or three years). This is because it combines the quality of
TeX's typesetting algorithms (+ unicode/opentype/...) with the ability to
program in Lua, a very decent programming language. In "Lua mode", you have
access to all TeX's internal parameters and algorithms, so you can even do the
line breaking and pdf writing from inside lua. That means you don't have to
use TeX's input language any more, a language that keeps many people away from
using TeX. Now that you have everything on the Lua side, there is no reason
why not to read XML, RTF, Wiki-Markup and other file formats and use the TeX
algorithms to typeset these files.

TeX internally works with nodes. Every character you type, every space you use
(like the space between paragraphs), every color command will be changed to a
nodelist. The boxes and linebreaking algorithm operate on these nodes. In
LuaTeX (in lua) you can create nodes manually and feed this list into the
linebreaking algorithm and you get back a box of a perfectly nice typeset
paragraph. Then you can even operate on these nodes again (or just before
linebreaking) and ship out this paragraph into the pdf file. Nobody cares
where you get the input from. There are several libraries included with LuaTeX
and available for inclusion, such as LPEG (for really nice and sophisticated
parsing), luasocket (internet access), luazip, etc. Even luaexpat (xml) and
luasql (Database access) are available, so that makes LuaTeX perfectly suited
for database publishing (which is what I am doing)

No other TeX engine can do that at the moment!

For the german speaking hackers, I am running the site

<http://www.luatex.de>

where I write technical stuff about LuaTeX (and some announcements), but
beware: all in german.

[Edit: here is the site with google translation to english:

[http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&h...](http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.luatex.de&sl=de&tl=en)

]

~~~
asolove
So let's say I am totally convinced, not by the programmability, but by the
combination of unicode support and microtypography.

For LaTeX, everyone knows that to get professional output you just read
through the two (!) manuals for the memoir class and then you know pretty much
everything you need. Where do I start to make professional looking output with
ConTeXt?

~~~
patrickg
Just this site:

<http://contextgarden.net>

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jfb
How is this news, exactly? I use it and love it every day, but ... eh.

EDIT: Well, I see it's turned someone back onto LaTeX, so good on the
submitter, then.

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dmm
OpenType? What's wrong with Computer Modern? ;)

~~~
Silhouette
I'm not a huge fan of Computer Modern's appearance, but as a practical font
for typesetting math it's a work of genius.

Alas, there are hardly any other fonts that include the range of glyphs
required for serious mathematical typesetting.

On the subject of XeTeX, fontspec, et al, while they do make using OpenType
fonts much easier, alas they cannot magically create corresponding
mathematical glyphs. They also, last time I used them, lacked decent support
for setting equations using OpenType fonts, though the situation did seem to
be improving so that may no longer be an issue.

Now, if someone wanted to sponsor the guys at some of the big font foundries
to make matching mathematical glyphs to accompany some of the nice,
professional-grade OpenType fonts they make, that would be fabulous, but
probably a rather expensive bit of philanthropy given the niche market.

~~~
asolove
There are some surprising available math fonts, here is a page with sample
output showing which available math fonts match which available text fonts:

[http://ctan.tug.org/tex-
archive/info/Free_Math_Font_Survey/s...](http://ctan.tug.org/tex-
archive/info/Free_Math_Font_Survey/survey.html)

~~~
Silhouette
I appreciate what you're saying, but IMHO almost none of the samples on that
page looks sufficiently professional that I would use it to set a textbook.
Computer Modern has at least stood the test of time, and gives a clean,
uniform appearance to text and mathematical type.

If I were setting a serious work, I would like to use a high quality serif
font, something like Emigre's _Mrs Eaves_ or Adobe's _Arno Pro_ , but alas,
these fonts have a rather limited range of mathematical glyphs, which means
you either get the "two similar but different fonts" problem (which nearly
always looks bad) or you have to pick a font that isn't as nice for the body
text just because it has matching math symbols available.

~~~
asolove
Should have mentioned to jump to the bottom of the page. Many of the examples
are ugly, but Minion and Utopia are, of course, pro Adobe fonts used in a
large number of professionally-typeset books.

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cracki
so this is basically latex, with with support for unicode and difficult font
features...

i'd love to see someone submit a different approach to writing technical
documents. something that doesn't look like the macro system of latex, or a
soup of XML tags.

~~~
expeditious
The _least_ of my complaints about LaTeX is how it _looks_. I don't mind the
markup at all.

Now, the _complexity_ of the whole system, that's what I have a problem with.

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imok20
Any chance of a version that works on Snow Leopard being released? Just tried
installing – no luck. A shame, I'm about to start typesetting a paper.

~~~
bugs
Did you try mactex?

<http://www.tug.org/mactex/2009/>

~~~
imok20
Got it, messing with it now :) There a neat way to use emacs with it?

~~~
arebop
I'm new at AUCTeX but so far, so good. I'm using TeX Live via MacPorts but I
guess AUCTeX and XeTeX would get along fine.

~~~
bugs
They should and mactex should basically be the same as texlive as I believe
that is what it is created from, if someone wants a gui for the mac I believe
<http://www.uoregon.edu/~koch/texshop/> is popular

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zokier
So is XeTeX+ConTeXt (ed note: I hate the odd capitalization) the typesetting
system to use, or are there even better combos?

~~~
patrickg
LuaTeX + ConTeXt (also called MKIV), see the page on
<http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Mark_IV>. With this combo, you can use the
typesetting power of TeX and the programming power of LuaTeX combined.

------
swah
Misread as XeXeca

