XeTeX (
or ; see also
Pronouncing and writing "TeX") is a
TeX typesetting engine using
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
and supporting modern font technologies such as
OpenType
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark ...
,
Graphite
Graphite () is a crystalline form of the element carbon. It consists of stacked layers of graphene. Graphite occurs naturally and is the most stable form of carbon under standard conditions. Synthetic and natural graphite are consumed on la ...
and
Apple Advanced Typography
Apple Advanced Typography (AAT) is Apple Inc.'s computer technology for advanced font rendering, supporting internationalization and complex features for typographers, a successor to Apple's little-used QuickDraw GX font technology of the mid- ...
(AAT). It was originally written by Jonathan Kew and is distributed under the
X11 free software license.
Initially developed for
Mac OS X
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lap ...
only, it is now available for all major platforms. It natively supports Unicode and the input file is assumed to be in
UTF-8
UTF-8 is a variable-length character encoding used for electronic communication. Defined by the Unicode Standard, the name is derived from ''Unicode'' (or ''Universal Coded Character Set'') ''Transformation Format 8-bit''.
UTF-8 is capable of e ...
encoding by default. XeTeX can use any fonts installed in the operating system without configuring
TeX font metric
TeX font metric (TFM) is a font file format used by the TeX typesetting system. It is a font metric format, not an outline font format like TrueType, because it provides only the information necessary to typeset the font such as each character's ...
s, and can make direct use of advanced typographic features of
OpenType
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark ...
,
AAT and
Graphite
Graphite () is a crystalline form of the element carbon. It consists of stacked layers of graphene. Graphite occurs naturally and is the most stable form of carbon under standard conditions. Synthetic and natural graphite are consumed on la ...
technologies such as alternative
glyph
A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
s and
swashes, optional or historic
ligatures, and variable font weights. Support for OpenType local typographic conventions (
locl
tag) is also present. XeTeX even allows raw OpenType feature tags to be passed to the font.
Microtypography is also supported. XeTeX also supports typesetting mathematics using Unicode fonts that contain special mathematical features, such as
Cambria Math
Cambria is a transitional serif typeface commissioned by Microsoft and distributed with Windows and Office. It was designed by Dutch typeface designer Jelle Bosma in 2004, with input from Steve Matteson and Robin Nicholas. It is intended as a ser ...
or
Asana Math as an alternative to the traditional mathematical typesetting based on TeX font metrics.
Mode of operation
XeTeX processes input in two stages. In the first stage XeTeX outputs an
extended DVI
The device independent file format (DVI) is the output file format of the TeX typesetting program, designed by David R. Fuchs and implemented by Donald E. Knuth in 1982. Unlike the TeX markup files used to generate them, DVI files are not inte ...
(
xdv
) file, which is then converted to
PDF
Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...
by a driver. In the default operating mode the
xdv
output is piped directly to the driver without producing any user-visible intermediate files. It is possible to run just the first stage of XeTeX and save the
xdv
, although there are no viewers capable of displaying the intermediate format.
Two backend drivers are available to generate PDF from an
xdv
file:
* xdv2pdf, which uses
ATSUI
The Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging (ATSUI) is the set of services for rendering Unicode-encoded text introduced in Mac OS 8.5 and carried forward into Mac OS X.
It replaced the WorldScript engine for legacy encodings.
Obsolescence
...
and
QuickTime
QuickTime is an extensible multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. Created in 1991, the latest Mac version, QuickTime X, is a ...
frameworks, and only works on
Mac OS X
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lap ...
.
* xdvipdfmx, a modified version of
dvipdfmx, which uses
FreeType. This driver works on all platforms.
Starting from version 0.997, the default driver is xdvipdfmx on all platforms. As of version 0.9999, xdv2pdf is no longer supported and its development has been discontinued.
XeTeX works well with both
LaTeX
Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latexes are found in nature, but synthetic latexes are common as well.
In nature, latex is found as a milky fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants (angiosperms ...
and
ConTeXt
Context may refer to:
* Context (language use), the relevant constraints of the communicative situation that influence language use, language variation, and discourse summary
Computing
* Context (computing), the virtual environment required to s ...
macro packages. Its LaTeX counterpart is invoked as
xelatex
. It is usually used with the
fontspec
package, which provides a configurable interface for font selection, and allows complex font choices to be named and later reused.
XeTeX is bundled with
TeX Live,
MacTeX,
MiKTeX and
Lyx (see the
History
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...
below for dates and versions).
Example
The following is an example of XeLaTeX source and rendered output. The typeface used is
OFL-licensed font
Linux Libertine
Linux Libertine is a digital typeface created by the Libertine Open Fonts Project, which aims to create free and open alternatives to proprietary typefaces such as Times New Roman. It is developed with the free font editor FontForge and is lice ...
. The text is to be processed by the command
xelatex
.
Arabic support
XeTeX also supports
right-to-left
In a script (commonly shortened to right to left or abbreviated RTL, RL-TB or R2L), writing starts from the right of the page and continues to the left, proceeding from top to bottom for new lines. Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Pashto, Urdu, Kashmir ...
scripts, such as
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
. One way of rendering Arabic in XeTeX is to use the package arabxetex. In order to do so, the Arabic is placed inside the following:
\begin tf.
.
.
\end
The following code illustrates this:
Features
In bibliographic files (see below the BibTeX example) you can use Unicode entities and call them with their native scripting, for example
\cite, instead of a transliterated ASCII form like
\cite which is mandatory using the
pdfTeX
__NOTOC__
The computer program pdfTeX is an extension of Knuth's typesetting program TeX, and was originally written and developed into a publicly usable product by Hàn Thế Thành as a part of the work for his PhD thesis at the Faculty of I ...
engine.
% Encoding: UTF8
@ARTICLE(Ekstrom,
AUTHOR = "Author w",
TITLE = "",
JOURNAL = "Ekstrm Journal",
YEAR = 1965,
note =
)
@ARTICLE(Ekstrøm,
AUTHOR = "Author Ekstrm",
TITLE = "",
JOURNAL = "Ekstrøm Journal",
YEAR = "1965",
note =
)
History
XeTeX was initially released for
Mac OS X
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lap ...
only in April 2004 with built-in
AAT and
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
support. In 2005 support for OpenType layout features was first introduced. During BachoTeX 2006 a version for
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...
was announced, which was ported to
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...
by Akira Kakuto a few months later, and finally included into
TeX Live 2007 for all major platforms. XeTeX is also supported by
LyX since version 2.0
and shipped with
MiKTeX since version 2.7.
As of the inclusion in
TeX Live, XeTeX supports most macro packages written for
LaTeX
Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latexes are found in nature, but synthetic latexes are common as well.
In nature, latex is found as a milky fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants (angiosperms ...
,
OpenType
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark ...
,
TrueType
TrueType is an outline font standard developed by Apple in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript. It has become the most common format for fonts on the classic Mac OS, macOS, and Microsoft Windows operating ...
and
PostScript
PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Do ...
fonts without any specific setup procedure.
Version 0.998 announced at
BachoTeX 2008 supports
Unicode normalization
Unicode equivalence is the specification by the Unicode character encoding standard that some sequences of code points represent essentially the same character. This feature was introduced in the standard to allow compatibility with preexisting ...
via the
\XeTeXinputnormalization
command.
Version 0.9999, released in May 2013, switched from
ICU Layout Engine to
HarfBuzz for
OpenType
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark ...
layout, and Graphite2 engine for
Graphite
Graphite () is a crystalline form of the element carbon. It consists of stacked layers of graphene. Graphite occurs naturally and is the most stable form of carbon under standard conditions. Synthetic and natural graphite are consumed on la ...
layout, as well
Core Text
Core Text is a Core Foundation style API in macOS, first introduced in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, made public in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, and introduced for the iPad with iPhone SDK 3.2. Exposing a C API, it replaces the text rendering abilities of th ...
framework instead of
ATSUI
The Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging (ATSUI) is the set of services for rendering Unicode-encoded text introduced in Mac OS 8.5 and carried forward into Mac OS X.
It replaced the WorldScript engine for legacy encodings.
Obsolescence
...
on Mac OS X.
See also
*
LuaTeX
LuaTeX is a TeX-based computer typesetting system which started as a version of pdfTeX with a Lua scripting engine embedded. After some experiments it was adopted by the TeX Live distribution as a successor to pdfTeX (itself an extension of ε- ...
*
Omega (TeX) Omega is an extension of the TeX typesetting system that uses the Basic Multilingual Plane of Unicode. It was authored by John Plaice and Yannis Haralambous after TeX development was frozen in 1991, primarily to enhance TeX's multilingual typeset ...
*
Typeface
A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font.
There are thousands o ...
*
TeXworks – A multi-platform, Unicode editor designed for working with TeX files, written by the author of XeTeX.
*
List of TeX extensions
TeX is a free typesetting system for which many extensions have been developed.
Languages
* ArabTeX – adds support for Hebrew and Arabic alphabets
* FarsiTeX – adds support for Farsi
* Omega (TeX) – extends multilinguality by usi ...
References
Further reading
* M. Goossens (Ed.) (2008
The XeTeX Companion: TeX meets OpenType and Unicode
External links
*
The Beauty of LaTeX illustrates XeTeX use with professional fonts.
TeX Catalogue Entry for fontspec
TeX Catalogue Entry for babel
TeX Catalogue Entry for polyglossia
TeX Catalogue Entry for xltxtra
TeX Catalogue Entry for xunicode
XeTeX Showcase at TUG
{{DEFAULTSORT:Xetex
2007 software
Digital typography
Free PDF software
Free TeX software
Linux TeX software
Software using the MIT license
TeX
Unicode