[OS X TeX] XeLaTeX?

[david craig]

> This answer has several levels:
>
> - If you use psticks or psfrag, you can't use xe(la)tex without
> changes to your source. (or switch from latex+dvips to pdflatex).
> - If you customized your layout (especially including font changes)
> you will have to change your source to get the layout in xelatex.
> - If you are heavy on mathematical typesetting, not all fonts will be
> able to handle all symbols.
> - Journals expect you to send 'standard' latex.
>
> There are enough little changes you need to make switching from 
> pdfLaTeX to XeLaTeX to make support a nightmare if the default is 
> switched. Besides, a lot of the documentation on custom layout is 
> suddenly obsoleted.

That was helpful perspective, but I'm still confused, especially about 
point number two.  What exactly do you mean by "customized your layout"?

Almost everything I do is heavy in mathematics.  It would be helpful to 
have a sense of which fonts can be reaosnably safely interchanged with 
computer modern.

And what was it someone said about switching to unicode?  I need to 
"start to write and save in UTF-8. Or UTF-16."   Why is this necessary 
for the source file?  That's a requirement of the xelatex engine?

And, knowing little about unicode or text encodings, how would I do 
that, anyway?   I generally use AlphaX as my text editor.  (As I 
understand it, full unicode support in Alpha is a ways off.)

Still needing that step-by-step walkthrough...

(Thanks for that sample preambles, though, folks!)

> - So far, there's no support for pdftex's microtypography features,
> which is for me the reason I stay with (pdf)LaTeX for the moment.

"microtypography"?   (Yes, I googled it.)

David Craig


<http://www.panix.com/~dac/>