Yue Wang wrote:
QUOTE:
TeX engines are batch document processors but worth looking into
separately. Historically TeX had no shaping engines and basic shaping
was done using macro packages and a variety of hacks. More recently
though, XeTeX was invented. XeTeX simply outsources the shaping to an
external library, ICU or Apple's ATSUI currently. XeTeX is a separate
branch of the TeX evolutionary hierarchy than the mainstream pdfTeX
though. The XeTeX creator is working on HarfBuzz on behalf of Mozilla
now, and plans to port XeTeX to HarfBuzz eventually. In the long term
though, pdfTeX's successor luaTeX should be made to do the same thing.
There is more to Unicode support than just shaping, and in those areas
the TeX engines can gain a lot by building on top of existing
libraries.
so if you wan tto use those libraries use xetex instead then (no gain in
using luatex); the objective of the luatex project is to have a regular
opened up tex engine with all under user/macro package control
eventually (when luatex is mostly finished) one can always consider
using libraries (i.e. converting node lists to whatever some library
likes and convert what comes back to node lists) but that is then just
one of the methods and not part of the luatex project
Hans
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Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
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