Re: [AUCTeX-devel] XeTeX

[David Kastrup]

Peter Dyballa <address@hidden> writes:

> Am 06.06.2006 um 20:40 schrieb David Kastrup:
>
>> Peter Dyballa <address@hidden> writes:
>>
>>> Xe(La)TeX is now available on BSD systems, Linux, Solaris, and MS
>>> Windows. I think it's high time now to add a Xe(La)TeX entry to the
>>> commands menu.
>>
>> Why would it not be installed as "tex" and "latex" ?
>>
>
> Because it's 100% Unicode through and through (no input encoding),
> still a bit experimental, only producing .xdv files of a DVI like
> contents and using the also experimental xdvipdfmx on non-Mac systems
> and by default xdv2pdf on Mac OS X (could be xdvipdfmx, too) and
> finally it's not part of any TeX distribution nor is it compatible to
> all (La)TeX packages -- particularly Babel and hyphenation are
> problems!
>
> AUCTeX is quite clever, so it can check whether

With the same kind of reasoning, you could argue that it should be
able to brew coffee.

> there are Xe(La)TeX formats (kpsewhich -format=fmt xelatex) or
> binaries (which xetex xelatex) on the system, and when there are,
> the Command menu is augmented.

Nope.  If at all, this would be done using a flag similar to the Omega
flag.  No sense at all making the Command menu even longer.  That's
not the way we solved this sort of problem in the past, and it messes
up the command shorthands without good reason.  And we don't check for
binaries at runtime if we can avoid it.

As long as there is no developer actively using XeTeX (or having it
installed), I doubt we can reliably figure out which commands to call
and what options are not available.  Then it seems like it has its own
dvi-like files (what a mess).  And it is not clear to me whether it
can produce PDF.  This can't be done sensibly in a hurry, and it can't
be done without a developer actively playing around with XeTeX.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum