Re: LaTeX export: when is it more useful to use LuaTeX instead of pdfTeX?

[Juan Manuel Macías]

Max Nikulin writes:

> LuaTeX uses Latin Modern
> and it is not nearly Unicode

Maxim, please look at this screenshots carefully:

https://i.imgur.com/uMfheCL.png

https://i.imgur.com/WwGybBA.png

https://i.imgur.com/hpreFNQ.png

Frankly, I don't know what Latin Modern you're referring to, and what
you mean by saying that "it is not nearly unicode".

The default LM font in LuaLaTeX and XeTeX is an otf and Unicode font.
Which is not to say that it has all the glyphs to represent all possible
characters. Because I guess you know the difference between glyph and
character...

Perhaps a font with a broader coverage could have been chosen by default
for LuaLaTeX, but here the (LaTeX) historical reasons have prevailed.
It's probably not the happiest choice, but LM is still a Unicode font
nonetheless.

And I insist: what you say about it being necessary to completely
configure everything related to fonts in LuaTeX is not correct. It
depends on the use case, and you can go (as I said in my previous email)
from the simplest to the most complex configuration.

On the other hand: I think that in the case of LuaTeX and XeTeX the
choice and configuration of fonts should be on the LaTeX side and not
Org's. Implementing that in Org would lead to a bunch of variables to
cater for all possible cases. It might suffice to give some examples of
basic use (like the ones I have put in the previous mail, and that will
be enough for most users) and recommend free license fonts for different
languages[1]. Maybe starting here:

https://tug.org/FontCatalogue/opentypefonts.html

But if the user needs more fine-tuning of fonts and languages, he/she
will undoubtedly have to read the fontspec and babel manuals, depending
on his needs, which can be very different from one user to another.

[1] Although I see it as unnecessary. Fonts are not recommended when the
output is odt...

> With the following minimal example I got
> blank space instead of non-latin characters.

> \documentclass{article}
> \begin{document}
> Abc — Αλφάβητο — Азбука…
> \end{document}

\documentclass{article}
% ================
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{FreeSerif}
% ================
\begin{document}
Abc — Αλφάβητο — Азбука…
\end{document}

\usepackage{fontspec}\setmainfont{FreeSerif} is the same as choosing the
font in the libreoffice font menu.

You have to keep in mind that LuaTeX and XeTeX are designed so that it
is the user who decides which fonts to use and so that it's the user who
has the freedom to manage those fonts as he wishes. Okay: they could
have made a series of fallback fonts load by default to cover all
glyphs, for users who don't want to mess with typography. But I think
that this basic example that I have put is quite simple, and gives the
user the freedom to choose his preferred font and not the one imposed by
the system. And, at the end of the day, TeX is essentially a
typographical tool, whether you like it or not. Of course, LaTeX can be
used on autopilot because many scientific publications ask for articles
in LaTeX (with very little room for maneuver on the part of the authors,
since in the end a LaTeXpert will do the typesetting for the
publication). But there are also users who want to create their own book
layout from scratch, and use whatever font they want, in the same way as
when exporting to html from org there are users who like to write their
own css styles. LuaTeX and XeTeX offer the user that freedom, and it can
be done very simply. I have used pdfLaTeX for a long, long time and I
know very well how immensely laborious it was to install new type1
fonts, because I installed quite a few. Now, in LuaTeX any system font
can be used in a simple and fast way, I think it is something that users
should value more.