<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br><div><div>On Mar 16, 2010, at 11:00 AM, David Messerschmitt wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div><br><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"> I don't really see how it helps anyone to have this proliferation of (la)tex implementations with differing abilities.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><br><br>I assume the issue here is whether merging the versions could be done transparently, that is, without breaking some people's existing documents, scripts, etc.<br>Of course merging would have the advantage of making document sharing smoother. It seems like one of those "rock and a hard place" issues: <br>The problems that prevent smooth merging are the very same problems that get in the way of document sharing.<br></div></blockquote></div><div><br></div>This is the one big issue with respect to XeTeX: by allowing full access to system installed fonts (as opposed to TeX installed fonts) it brings back the whole problem of incompatible fonts across different OS's; of course there are some open source OpenType fonts available for all systems (e.g. TeX Gyre), but in general, users won't have these fonts. <div><br></div><div>Also, even with a particular OS, most users may be unaware of the sources of their system fonts. My machines all have MS Office and Adobe CS3 on them, and I have a lot of fonts available that other Mac users may not have if they have neither of those packages. I have some sense of the Adobe fonts, but not much of the MS fonts, with respect which actually came with my Mac and which didn't.<br><div><br></div><div>In practice, then, a xetex document created on on system will not necessarily be portable to another system; in regular latex this is rarely a problem. (Although perhaps only due to the fact that adding new fonts to a TeX distribution is such a PITA that most people just put up with the few that are available.)</div><div><br></div><div>For this reason, I haven't made a full switch to xetex, although I use it for certain things where I want a more interesting font selection. (And distributing source is not a problem.)</div><div><br></div><div>Alan</div><div><br></div><div><br><div apple-content-edited="true"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>-- </div><div>Alan Munn</div><div><a href="mailto:amunn@gmx.com">amunn@gmx.com</a></div><div><br></div></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"> </div><br></div></div></body></html>