2012/7/30 Adam Twardoch (List) <list.a...@twardoch.com>: > On 12-07-30 21:00, Zdenek Wagner wrote: >>> The question is: is it >>> easier to find a volunteer for maintaining XeTeX or a volunteer who >>> will implement missing features for luaotfload and port important >>> packages as Polyglossia to luatex? > It is definitely easier to replace the ICU Layout integration in XeTeX > with HarfBuzz integration, and to tweak the XeTeX code to potentially > remove the native Mac OS X font engine integration (or at least make it > optional) than to write full-scale OpenType Layout shapers in Lua from > scratch. HarfBuzz is still not perfect but it definitely developing > towards becoming the only sensible OpenType Layout engine within the > open-source realm. Developing some of the shapers, especially for Indic > languages, is not trivial per se (it is taking the HarfBuzz developers > quite a long time, and it is after all an intensive effort). Doing > everything from scratch in Lua will be a similarly long-winded effort: > Lua is not a very popular language, and even if an complete OTL solution > is created in Lua some day, it will need maintenance. > Understood.
> The great thing about the XeTeX concept is that it doesn't try to do > everything itself. It uses the best available components to do the > heavy-lifting. When Jonathan Kew created it, ICU Layout was the best > OpenType Layout library available. Soon, HarfBuzz will be the best one, > guaranteed to be maintained. > > As I've written on this list previously, integrating HarfBuzz into XeTeX > (as an alternative to the existing engines, i.e. ICU Layout, Graphite 1 > and ATSUI) would be very desirable. I think such a project could be > funded by some of the existing TeX groups. > In past LUGs spent good deal of money on several TeX related projects. I believe that this policy will continue and funding XeTeX development by LUGs should not be a problem. > Best, > Adam > > -- > > May success attend your efforts, > -- Adam Twardoch > (Remove "list." from e-mail address to contact me directly.) > -- Zdeněk Wagner http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/ http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz -------------------------------------------------- Subscriptions, Archive, and List information, etc.: http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex
