Without knowing a great deal about all the TeX flavors, I'd like to point out that a "one documentation for everything and everybody" is unlikely to get finished and to work out. It will rather confuse readers, I think. I myself have switched from LaTeX/TeX to XeTeX for the simple reason that XeTeX can handle ttf/otf fonts without to much hassle. What I missed was not so much a complete documentation about XeTeX--which, however, is never a bad thing to have--than more a kind of a quick start. What is the strength of XeTeX? Which gap does it fill and how is it solved.
IMO, a XeTeX documentation/manual should not explain what is explained elsewhere, i.e. it should not explain plain TeX before it goes on to explain XeTeX. There should probably be a section devoted to other TeX variants, a chapter with a quick start as described above but in essence a XeTeX documentation should focus on XeTeX _only_ and what it adds to TeX (with useful examples). If you want a documentation about LuaTeX it's up to the LuaTeX project to provide a documentation, isn't it? Alex On Sun, Sep 12, 2010 at 11:03 AM, Philipp Stephani <st_phil...@yahoo.de> wrote: > > Am 12.09.2010 um 10:22 schrieb Apostolos Syropoulos: > >>> greatly diminished. OpenType Math is still in a very early stage in XeTeX >>> and >>> has so many bugs that it is not ready for production use. >> >> I think this is a wrong statement: OpenType Math is by itself in early stage. >> Only >> two-three products make use of it. > > Maybe, but one of them is MS Word, and it was introduced there three years > ago (and development probably started years before that). > >>> - Of course ConTeXt mustn't be ignored. ConTeXt Mk IV, which is based on >>> LuaTeX, >>> >>> seems to have everything that is missing from LaTeX: a stable, coherent >>> interface, a well-designed >>> >>> architecture that makes LaTeX-style hacking and package clashes >>> unnecessary, >>> XML support, >>> >>> micro-typography, OpenType math, and much more. >> >> Even if this true, why so few people use ConTeXt? IMHO, ConTeXt is more >> difficult to learn and use >> than LaTeX. In a final analysis, you cannot force people to use something >> just >> because you >> think it is better. You have to convince them and so far it seems they are >> not. > > I don't use ConTeXt myself that much, largely because of the lack of > documentation and my own laziness. Unfortunately many of the documents are > outdated and cover the "old" ConTeXt Mk II instead of Mk IV. Also there is > peer pressure: Someone willing to use ConTeXt is largely on his/her own, > without support from colleagues, because LaTeX is still ubiquitous. After > all, LaTeX is good enough for most people, and the rest usually doesn't have > the time to become acquainted with a very different systems. > > > -------------------------------------------------- > Subscriptions, Archive, and List information, etc.: > http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex > -------------------------------------------------- Subscriptions, Archive, and List information, etc.: http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex
