[OS X TeX] TeXShop 2.34

[Herbert Schulz]

On Jun 4, 2010, at 6:09 AM, Benoit RIVET wrote:

> 
> Le 4 juin 2010 à 12:53, Josep Maria Font a écrit :
> 
>> El 04/06/2010, a las 11:23, Simon Spiegel escribió:
>> 
>>> Today, most (La)TeX users use pdftex to process their files. LuaTeX is meant to replace pdftex. 
>> 
>> An end user *uses* a front end, and should not need to be aware of the existence of pdftex. I understand that LuaTeX will be the new "background engine", but users will continue to use TeXShop, TeXmaker or whatever... ?
> 
> End users are not supposed to be aware of which engine it uses. Thus, using latex, pdflatex or lualatex should make no difference for them. However, developers shall be able to bring end users more powerful packages when lualatex will be ready for production (I guess that tikz shall greatly benefit from lua; and we may also have package enabling pstricks directly in lualatex): in the end, this may be compelling enough for end users to switch to lualatex, just the way they switched form latex to pdflatex (and pdf format instead of dvi).

Howdy,

I think end users have to know which engine they are using. Each one has its own, possibly subtle, requirements. The details in the way xelatex and lualatex are directed to use fonts and which fonts they can use are different so your preamble will be different. The graphics formats that can be included, by default, are different; you can't directly include pdf or jpg directly when compiling with latex->dvips->ps2pdf but you can with pdflatex. Some of the graphics packages, e.g., pstricks, will not work, by default, in pdflatex. This list goes on.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)