XeTeX

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XeTeX

Developed by	Jonathan Kew
Latest release	0.996 / 28 February 2007
OS	Cross-platform
Genre	Typesetting
License	MIT License
Website	http://scripts.sil.org/xetex

XeTeX (pronounced /ˈziːtɛx/ or /ˈziːtɛχ/, though English lacks /x/ or /χ/) is a TeX typesetting engine using Unicode and supporting modern font technologies such as OpenType or Apple Advanced Typography. It is written and maintained by Jonathan Kew and distributed under the X11 free software license.^[1]

Initially developed for Mac OS X only, it is now available for all major platforms. It natively supports Unicode and the input file is assumed to be in UTF-8 encoding by default.

XeTeX has simple font installation and can use any installed fonts in the operating system without configuring TeX font metrics. XeTeX uses AAT when working on Mac OS X using the xdv2pdf driver, or FreeType using dvipdfmx (which is the default on Windows or Linux). As a result, XeTeX can access font features such as alternative glyphs, special ligatures, swashes and variable font weights.

Examples of special alternate glyphs include the long s (ſ), as found in Hoefler Text font, and end-of-word swashes, which are normally inaccessible unless an application enables certain font options.

XeTeX works well with both LaTeX and ConTeXt. Its LaTeX counterpart is invoked as XeLaTeX. It is usually used with the xltxtra package. It is currently bundled with the TeX Live, MacTeX and MiKTeX distributions.

[edit] History

Rendering of ligatures in XeTeX using an OpenType font (Hoefler Text).

XeTeX was initially developed for Mac OS X only. During BachoTeX 2006 a version for Linux was announced, which was ported to Microsoft Windows by Akira Kakuto a few months later, and finally included into TeX Live 2007 for all major platforms. XeTeX is also shipped with MiKTeX since version 2.7.