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==About XeTeX==
[http://scripts.sil.org/xetex XeTeX ] is a new TeX engine by Jonathan Kew and SIL International, which combines eTeX with pervasive [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode Unicode] support and advanced font support (multiple language, special AAT and OpenType font features, trivial font installation). It does this by leveraging [http://developer.apple.com/fonts/ Apple Advanced Typography ] support on MacOSX, so it gains its strength in features by sacrificing TeX's usual cross-platformness, and some backwards compatibility.
==XeTeX and ConTeXt==
XeTeX is a potential replacement for pdfeTeX in the ConTeXt workflow. It does not support all of the fancy PDF features found with pdfeTeX, but it supports most core features (see [[#Limitations|Limitations]] on this page). Common consensus is that for text with non-heavy mathematics needs, XeTeX should be an interesting alternative.
===Installing XeTeX===
===Running XeTeX===
XeTeX is invoked with the <tt>--xtx</tt> switch in <tt>texexec</tt>. This loads the XeTeX-specific specials, typescripts and other commands, and actually runs ConTeXt within XeTeX. Technically, XeTeX is an eTeX-like processor, and outputs an <tt>.xdv</tt> file. After texexec's final XeTeX run, texexec runs <tt>xdv2pdf</tt> in order to create a PDF file. texexec --xtx myfile.tex
===Features===
From there, things proceed fairly normally. [[Fonts in XeTeX]] get their own page, as they introduce some new features. Here are some new features that might be of interest:
; Unicode symbol sets : While not exclusive to XeTeX, exactly, you get easy access to named Unicode symbols. XeTeX-specific commands switch to Apple-supplied default fonts for these symbols.
; Basic Bi-directional code : This was ushered in with XeTeX, but is fundamentally an eTeX feature. There is tentative support for direction changing with <tt>\pardir TRT</tt> and <tt>TLT</tt>, emulating Omega/Aleph's commands. These should be seen as low-level commands, to be intgrated with language switching, for example.
; Alternate script number conversions : Hans introduced some clever machinery into the conversion macros, allowing one to efficiently define a conversion vector (<tt>\defineconversionvector</tt>) for script-specific numbers. Arabic and Persian are provided.
; More Unicode : In the process of preparing XeTeX support in ConTeXt, many more Unicode glyphs were named and introduced into ConTeXt, including some Greek, Cyrillic, and Vietnamese.
; [[Fonts in XeTeX|Typescripts]] :
===Limitations===
(as of [[26 November]] [[2004]])
; Font metrics :
; Line spacing :
; Object reuse :
; Bookmarks :
; Specials :
: [[User:Adam|Adam]] 01:15, 26 Nov 2004 (CET)
