Personally, I would not mind if XeTeX went into maintenance mode. I like such stability. It already has a great deal of functionality, probably enough to last me the rest of my writing career. I do take Vafa's point, though, that if future OS platforms break XeTeX, it would be nice to have someone fix things up.
Dominik On 28 October 2011 14:54, Vafa Khalighi <[email protected]> wrote: > My question in the first place had nothing to do with the development of > XeTeX. In fact it is a long time that there has been no development for > XeTeX and I have no problem with that. What scares me is that XeTeX may be > unusable in say several years. > > > On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 11:49 PM, Vafa Khalighi <[email protected]> wrote: > >> That is not entirely true. Should the users of TeX (those who use Knuth's >> original TeX engine) support the development of Knuth TeX or move to another >> engine just because Knuth no longer extends TeX and he only fixes bugs? >> >> >> On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 11:33 PM, George N. White III >> <[email protected]>wrote: >> >>> On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 8:58 AM, Mojca Miklavec >>> <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> > On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 13:19, Vafa Khalighi wrote: >>> >> Hi >>> >> Since Jonathan has no time any more for coding XeTeX, then what will >>> be the >>> >> state of XeTeX in TeX distributions such as TeXLive? will be XeTeX >>> removed >>> >> from TeXLive just like Aleph and Omega (in favour of LuaTeX) were >>> removed >>> >> from TeXLive? >>> > >>> > Omega was remove because it was buggy, unmaintained, but most >>> > important of all: hardly usable. It took a genius to figure out how to >>> > use it, while XeTeX is exactly the contrary. It simplifies everything >>> > in comparison to pdfTeX. Omega was low quality and Aleph was >>> > deprecated also because LuaTeX now contains all functionality that was >>> > worth keeping. >>> > >>> > There is no reason to remove XeTeX yet (unless it gets merged with >>> > LuaTeX one day, but that won't happen yet), but it is true that a >>> > maintainer is desperately needed. If nothing else, if nobody adapts >>> > the code, it might stop working with next version of Mac OS X or a >>> > version after that. >>> >>> If I have an old house that meets my needs but has substandard >>> plumbing and wiring, I may be in desperate need of a contractor >>> who can bring it up to current standards, or I can tear it down and >>> build a new house. Both options are expensive, but renovation >>> involves greater uncertainties requires more skills than does new >>> construction, so unless there are other considerations (house is a >>> historical landmark), new construction is often better than renovation. >>> >>> Clearly XeTeX fills a need, but that doesn't mean it deserves ongoing >>> development. The groups that rely on XeTeX have to either find a way >>> to support development or switch to a new engine, which at present is >>> LuaTeX. There has already been discussion of what would be needed >>> to make the changes in XeTeX, maybe there needs to be discussion >>> (in LuaTeX forums) of the barriers to adoption faced by the groups who >>> currently rely on XeTeX. >>> >>> -- >>> George N. White III <[email protected]> >>> Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia >>> >> >> > > > > -------------------------------------------------- > Subscriptions, Archive, and List information, etc.: > http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex > >
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