I thought that luatex was going to be the savior?
XeTeX: could it be TeX's saviour?
11–20 of 70 posts
Re: XeTeX: could it be TeX's saviour?
#12[deleted]
Re: XeTeX: could it be TeX's saviour?
#13I use xelatex in my work and it's still embarassingly fragmented and outdated. We need to start over on a new TeX-like project (also so that it can be ported to mobile).
Re: XeTeX: could it be TeX's saviour?
#14Umm, have these people ever heard of backward compatibility? Admittedly, many TeX package authors haven't either, but just dropping pstricks is going to make a ridiculous number of documents that have a figure in them impossible to compile. Not to mention the fact that TikZ, while better, is not better enough that everyone will want to invest time learning it... MikTeX's install-on-first-use has its problems, but doe…
Can't they just maintain both a bloated legacy version and a stripped down version that they focus on?
Re: XeTeX: could it be TeX's saviour?
#15I just use XeTeX so I can get proper kerning and ligatures. Oddly enough, as a typography nerd LaTeX just doesn't cut it.
Why don't you use luatex?
Re: XeTeX: could it be TeX's saviour?
#16>> Undoubtably a change this severe will be painful for some, but it will be less less painful than heading out to the computer shop in 3 years time to purchase the 2TB harddrive that will be required for the exponentially expanding tex updates.
Few arguments ever gain feasibility from hyperbole, this article is not an exception. The size of his texlive installation is purely circumstantial evidence, since that folder also includes backups of updated packages and all sorts of other "dynamic", i.e. user-specific data. Basing the argument on that seems...silly.
>> For those for whom adding the letters xe before typesetting is too much to bear, or for typesetting ancient documents
It isn't as easy as "just adding xe" before (La)TeX, since not all packages are integrated with it yet, and since the polyglossia package is still not fully stable, either (yes I know babel is old, but at least stable), so some packages have trouble dealing with polyglossia or have experimental interfaces in order to work with Xe(La)TeX. Csquotes is one of the packages that comes to mind. A further problem with XeTeX is that it still does not offer a proper version of the microtype package. And on top of everything, the hyperref-support for colours is spotty at times, at least for me.
For me, depending on situation, pdflatex and xelatex live happily next to each other and are both included in the same in my generic template via the ifxetex package and \ifxetex...\else...\fi, so depending on what I need in a given instance, running either binary on the same file produces either output.
Re: XeTeX: could it be TeX's saviour?
#17In all honesty I did not realise LaTeX needed saving.
Outside of mathematics and physics conference/journal publishing, there's a widespread perception that it's losing ground. In CS some conferences are slowly switching to Word, or offering an option to authors (who are slowly switching to Word, especially outside of theory-heavy areas). In book publishing it's shrunk to a very small niche, even in technical areas. Part of the problem is cruftiness of tools, and part i…
> even in technical areas.
Really? What has it been replaced with?
Re: XeTeX: could it be TeX's saviour?
#18In all honesty I did not realise LaTeX needed saving.
Outside of mathematics and physics conference/journal publishing, there's a widespread perception that it's losing ground. In CS some conferences are slowly switching to Word, or offering an option to authors (who are slowly switching to Word, especially outside of theory-heavy areas). In book publishing it's shrunk to a very small niche, even in technical areas. Part of the problem is cruftiness of tools, and part i…
> In CS some conferences are slowly switching to Word, or offering an option to authors (who are slowly switching to Word, especially outside of theory-heavy areas).
Huh? In my research areas (evolutionary computation, machine learning, artificial intelligence, multiagent systems, robotics) this isn't remotely true. CS conferences of almost all stripes have always offered non-LaTeX submission routes. But LaTeX dominance is just as strong, if not stronger, than it used to be ten years ago.
Indeed, I think that the stigma surrounding Word submission in conference papers, journal articles, books, theses, even grant proposal submissions, is so strong that one must think twice before using it in the bulk of CS fields.
Re: XeTeX: could it be TeX's saviour?
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Outside of mathematics and physics conference/journal publishing, there's a widespread perception that it's losing ground. In CS some conferences are slowly switching to Word, or offering an option to authors (who are slowly switching to Word, especially outside of theory-heavy areas). In book publishing it's shrunk to a very small niche, even in technical areas. Part of the problem is cruftiness of tools, and part i…
> In CS some conferences are slowly switching to Word, or offering an option to authors (who are slowly switching to Word, especially outside of theory-heavy areas). Huh? In my research areas (evolutionary computation, machine learning, artificial intelligence, multiagent systems, robotics) this isn't remotely true. CS conferences of almost all stripes have always offered non-LaTeX submission routes. But LaTeX domina…
It depends on your particular flavor of CS. The less-theoryish flavors, like games or graphics, definitely do seem to be accepting of Word, and I've been to a couple conferences where Word was more prevalent.
Personally, I can't stand Word as an editing environment, because it doesn't offer a way of writing without worrying about formatting at the same time (seriously, if it had a markup view, I'd probably switch), and citation support is still a huge pain in the ass. However, LaTeX has many, many more pains in the ass for most people.
Re: XeTeX: could it be TeX's saviour?
#20In all honesty I did not realise LaTeX needed saving.
Outside of mathematics and physics conference/journal publishing, there's a widespread perception that it's losing ground. In CS some conferences are slowly switching to Word, or offering an option to authors (who are slowly switching to Word, especially outside of theory-heavy areas). In book publishing it's shrunk to a very small niche, even in technical areas. Part of the problem is cruftiness of tools, and part i…
Yeah, TeX is a really broken tech in 2012. When I tried to look at the base languages to edit a BibTeX file, it blew my mind. I'm lucky that LaTeX has templates that I like, I have no possible means of making one myself.
It seems like the whole article misses the point. pdftex doesn't need replacing, TeX needs replacing. Pandoc (with some better extension method) + CSS style sheets + TeX algorithm layout engine would be bliss.
Unfortunately, the engineering required for that would need some really committed people, and the people committed enough to typography seem to have put all their eggs in the TeX basket, because that's all they know.