[Aleph] ANNOUNCEMENT: LuaTeX Beta Release

[Idris Samawi Hamid]

Dear Aleph users,

As many of you know, the luaTeX project is the successor to Aleph. At TUG  
2007 the first luatex beta was released. Although many of the opentype and  
other advanced features are experimental, much of the aleph functionality  
is there and legacy aleph documents can be processed with a few caveats.  
For example, all input is utf-8 by default. So the otp's that convert  
input to unicode are obsolete and will not work in most cases. See the  
luatex reference manual for details on what is currently supported and  
what is not:

http://context.aanhet.net/luatex/beta/manual/luatexref-t.pdf

luatex can process ovf's etc in pdf mode so there is no need for post-dvi  
processing.

Personally I run luatex through ConTeXt. For Plain TeX and LaTeX perhaps  
some of the power users here can explain any setup issues.

Taco Hoekwater has fixed a number of bugs in Aleph along the way, so the  
aleph functionality is in many ways improved. See page 84 of the manual.  
There may of course still be some bugs, and even new ones may be lurking.

For the time being Aleph users may test the supported aleph functionality,  
particularly the directionality functionality. Some things like otps are  
being replaced by opentype layout features so the former may largely be  
considered as obsolete except for legacy purposes, though clearly defined  
and easily fixable issues may be addressed.

There are some bugs in the paragraph builder that affect both aleph-mode  
and pdftex output. HZ is not working at the moment. Please report any bugs  
you find in this regard.

Please join me in congratulating the progress of the luatex project and  
the beta release. The Aleph project has been a major bridge to the luaTeX  
project: the underlying motivations that drove the aleph project remain  
the same for the luatex project: providing pragmatic solutions to  
typesetting and typographic problems, with an emphasis on efficient and  
pragmatic development, and giving users and macrodevelopers maximum  
flexibility in creating solutions for users.

Aleph is dead (RIP): Long live Aleph!

Best wishes
Idris

-- 
Professor Idris Samawi Hamid
Department of Philosophy
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523

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