On 06/17/2011 11:37 AM, tlaro...@polynum.com wrote: > On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 10:18:20AM -0400, Joel C. Salomon wrote: >> At which point you've reinvented XeTeX. > > I've given a look at it. I don't want to start a discussion about > Unicode, since, supplementary to the "characters" <snip> > there are formatting commands or rendering <snip> > that I don't think should be there (only the historical ASCII controls > should be there; others should be undefined).
Ignore 'em. Or map them to TeX control sequences. > but no hieroglyphes or Linear B, so it's not complete ;) The fonts may be lacking, but Hieroglyphs & Linear B *are* in Unicode; see <alanwood.net/unicode/egyptian-hieroglyphs.html> and <alanwood.net/unicode/linear_b_syllabary.html>. > (the ligature fi > is not a character; but in the XeTeX FAQ it is said user has to insert > directly the Unicode for this codepoint since there is no ligature), That's true for TeX's "--" and "---" pseudo-ligatures; the XeTeX way is to insert the Unicode en- & em-dashes, or to use the "tex-text" font mapping. But for "fi" &c., or the more exotic ones, XeTeX will use whatever ligatures the font's designer has put into the OTF file. (Also be aware that the XeTeX FAQ on the SIL site is *seriously* out-of-date.) > But for XeTeX and Plan9 there is a special point: XeTeX uses some C++. > As I have answered privately to someone, it is not an absolute > obstacle---the files are not very numerous so a C flavour could be > achieved. > > But if people start throwing me XeTeX in the legs, I will start crying > for a C++ compiler on Plan9... A C version of the PDF library XeTeX uses to translate its "extended" XDVI format to PDF would be interesting. C++, though.... No, I'll not reopen that can of worms today. --Joel
