[OS X TeX] Macintouch report on TeX versus Word

[Alex Hamann]

On 24.01.2009, at 02:26, Jason Davies wrote:

*snip


> Finally -- people have mentioned switching to XeTeX. How easy is  
> that for someone who knows only some fairly basic LaTeX?


The good news is: it is very straightforward. You will simply save  
your files in a different encoding (Unicode) and adjust your editor  
to run the xelatex command on your documents. Then you will read a  
few pages of pdf documentation about the fontspec package and also  
add the xunicode package to your preamble and that's basically it.  
Oh, polyglossia will replace the babel package but that also will  
take you just minutes to figure out.
All in all you might have to invest something like 30 min to  
successfully create your first xelatex-based document but the  
benefits will be enormous, esp. for you as an ancient historian. You  
will, for example, be able to write Greek directly in your source tex  
file and you will be able to easily switch fonts within your document.
HTH,

Alex