General ⇒ LaTeX support for OpenType Math

[Keta]

In my renewed interest in typography I'm moving towards a more complete understanding of Unicode and OpenType. From what I've lately read, OpenType is clearly the way to go in digital typography, and most recent developments of TeX are aware of this. The most promising one from my point of view is LuaTeX, which deals with OpenType, specially with Math features, in a more advanced way than XeTeX, from what I have read on some TUGboat articles.

Closely linked with LuaTeX lies ConTeXt, so I started to wonder if it would be a good idea moving to that system if I wanted to make use of the next developments in Unicode and OpenType Math. Before making such an effort, however, I wanted some advice from other people, so I wanted to know your opinion. Among other things, I want to know if LaTeX is aware of OpenType Math and what are the developments in that direction. Will LaTeX3 provide a full implementation of these features as ConTeXt does?

[frabjous]

To my knowledge, the closest we have now to a full implementation of opentype math using unicode characters running on a LaTeX-based or LaTeX-like engine is the unicode-math package which can be used with both XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX. It's hard to predict where the future will go, and whether these technologies will ever be merged with regular LaTeX or pdfLaTeX, but the difference in what you need to know to use XeLaTeX as opposed to regular (pdf)LaTeX is so slight, that this development is nearly as good for those of us already used to LaTeX. But to my knowledge, most of this stuff is still in rapid developments, and perhaps too early to be used for real development purposes or commercial typesetting.

[Keta]

Thanks for your reply Frabjous. It is true that unicode-math can be used with LuaLaTeX, so I will probably go on with that. Now that I think about it, what I am more interested in right now is testing OpenType math (and not-math) features, kerning, alignment and other font properties, so I will probably stick to plain LuaTeX.

[Montag]

From what I've lately read, OpenType is clearly the way to go in digital typography, [...]

Well, I'd rather say this might be based on a biased source. From what I've read lately, there are a lot of PROs and CONs when dealing with OT or TT. Unfortunately, the relevant source is in German, maybe you are interested in its translation?