[tlug] Re: Tlug Digest, Vol 25, Issue 14

["Gernot Hassenpflug" <aikishugyo@example.com>]

> Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 18:30:48 +0900
> From: Simon Cozens <simon@example.com>
> Subject: Re: [tlug] [Announcement] TLUG Technical Meeting 2008-01-12 - update
> To: Tokyo Linux Users Group <tlug@example.com>
> Message-ID: <4789DA48.5010406@example.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> David J Iannucci wrote:
> > I'm just getting back into using LaTeX after many years including
> > a period of Office-apostasy, so this is of great interest....
>
> I don't know what was said at the meeting, but have I raved about Xetex
> recently? It's quite wonderful, since it uses the system fonts and

Hi, yes I mentioned XeTeX as an alternative that works with system TTF fonts.

> character mappings instead of messing around with Knuth's ingenious but
> sadly ahead of its time font metric system. The other options I've tried
> for typesetting Japanese with TeX have been the CJK package - which I
> eventually got working, but give me Unicode, please - and lambda, which was

I discussed the CJKutf.sty of the CJK package, which allows you to use
Unicode. That is what I use, I don't like to use the CJKeuc or CJKsjis
styles, for obvious reasons---same as yours! There are problems, in as
far as that if latex finds that a unicode character has already been
defined in the utf8enc.ufd file, then it is not currently very
straightforward to do local overrides in, say, the vertical style
(.fdx file), to modify the way the glyph is displayed. I'm working on
solutions to that problem.

> a bit easier to work with but still required lots of font jiggling. Xetex
> Just Works.

I think one problem might be (and similarly for other less major
variants of latex) that not all the packages that *I* need currently
work with XeTeX.

The good thing as far as I can see is that the latex development world
is more active than ever before, and the integration of programming
languages, better vector graphics formats (PGF versus EPS, for
instance) and more tools to manage latex projects, means that it is
becoming ever more easier to pick and choose, and then modify
accordingly, exactly what one wants to do a particular job.