Choice of processor

[David Carlisle]

On Sun, 2 Mar 2025, 16:40 Peter Flynn, <peter at silmaril.ie> wrote:

> Sorry, I sent this only to Phil, not to the list :-)
>
> On 02/03/2025 15:03, Philip Taylor wrote:
> > I use only XeTeX, Peter, and have never considered using LuaTeX simply
> > because (a) XeTeX does everything that I want, and (b) I do not wish to
> > (have to) learn Yet Another Programming Language [tm] at my very
> > advanced age ...
>

Most luatex users don't  need to code in lua, it's just available if you
want it.


>
> On 02/03/2025 15:28, David Carlisle wrote:
> > See
> > https://www.texdev.net/2024/11/05/engine-news-from-the-latex-project
>
> Thank you, very valuable.
>
> I think my principal concern is that the font loading and font startup
> in LuaLaTeX seems to cause problems finding fonts which are present on
> disk but not in places where LuaLaTeX is looking. I know how to fix that
> in Linux with fc-cache and additional files in /etc/fonts but I can't
> carry on explaining this to new users if LuaLaTeX uses some other method.
>

In most cases luatex finds fonts more easily than xetex. Xetex will only
find fonts in the tex tree if accessed by filename unless you configure
fontconfig to index the tex tree, conversely luatex searches the tex tree
and the system fonts out of the box.

>
> I need to be prescriptive: that is, I need to be able to say "do this and
> it will work", not give 15–20 pages of documentation about why it doesn't
> work :-)
>
> Thank you all very much
> --
> Peter Flynn
> 6 Halldene Lawn
> Bishopstown
> 🗺️ T12 WEX9 🇮🇪 Cork 🇪🇺 Ireland
> _____________________________
>
> ☎️ +353214546305
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> 📧 peter at silmaril.ie
> 🟦 @docum3nt.bsky.social
>
>
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