2011/3/14 Marco

On 2011-03-14 Cecil Westerhof wrote:

...

When installing minimals you have MKII, XeTeX and MKIV. I understand that you should normally use MKIV, but when are the other two used?

MKII can be used either with pdftex or xetex (as you wish, compare advantages/disadvantages). MKIV can only be used with luatex.

You have to differ between ConTeXt »versions« (mkii, mkiv) and TeX backends (pdftex, xetex, luatex).

And where do I find the advantages/disadvantages? Or can I just always use MKIV? -- Cecil Westerhof

On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 19:44, Marco wrote:
> On 2011-03-14 Cecil Westerhof wrote:
>> 2011/3/14 Marco wrote:
>> > On 2011-03-14 Cecil Westerhof wrote:
>> >
>> > > When installing minimals you have MKII, XeTeX and MKIV. I understand
>> > > that you should normally use MKIV, but when are the other two used?

They are mostly relicts of the past which still happen to be
supported. (But if ConTeXt was written from scratch, there would
probably be no support for them.)


I often write mathematical-oriented papers that need zero tweaking
with OpenType fonts, complex layouts or that could benefit from lua
scripting. I compile those randomly with MKII and MKIV, if nothing
else to check for differences, or if there is a problem in MKIV, I can
always use MKII is a fallback. MKII hardly ever changes, so it is
slightly more reliable in some cases, but it is very limited in
comparison to MKIV.

I use XeTeX mostly when I need OpenType fonts and something in MKIV
breaks. XeTeX has some advantages in out-of-the-box support for exotic
scripts (which I don't use), but many of its features are not
supported in ConTeXt at the high-level user interface. In general,
XeTeX is the least supported engine in ConTeXt community. In contrary,
for LaTeX users XeTeX is becoming the mainstream engine to use (best
supported by active developers).

>> > MKII can be used either with pdftex or xetex (as you wish, compare
>> > advantages/disadvantages). MKIV can only be used with luatex.
>> >
>> > You have to differ between ConTeXt »versions« (mkii, mkiv) and TeX
>> > backends (pdftex, xetex, luatex).
>> >
>>
>> And where do I find the advantages/disadvantages?
>
> Wikipedia, google, information source of your slightest distrust.
> Short and incomplete:
>
> pdftex:
> + protrusion, font expansion
> - fonts are a nightmare
(you should have put three minuses there :)
+ stability

> xetex:
> + system fonts are easily accessible
> - no protrusion, no font expansion

I never tried to use them, but I thought that Han The Thanh [please
add the accents] added that to XeTeX semi-recently
(http://scripts.sil.org/svn-view/xetex/TRUNK/, the last comment 8
months ago: "merged microtype branch to trunk").

> luatex:
> + protrusion, font expansion, easy access of system fonts, scripting language
>  included, fast with mplib
> - in general much slower

... depending on whether "in general" includes metapost or not. A
speed factor of ten (faster) is nothing unusual for luatex when many
metapost graphics come into play.

++ better support

>> Or can I just always use MKIV?
>
> Yes, you can.

Definitely. You don't need to bother, just stick to MKIV as long as it
works fine for you.

Mojca

On Mar 14, 2011, at 16:49, Marco wrote:

I totally agree. But Cecil mentioned in another thread: »My document is mostly text.« Even if a few mp graphics are involved luatex is still noticeably slower.

I look at it from the perspective that the last time I used TeX, my 8MHz Atari ST took several seconds to process each page. And then it took several seconds per page for the previewer to show me the DVI. And I couldn't do anything else on the machine while it was working. My way of working now is that I keep a short scratchpad document in TeXworks, and use it to sort out my formatting and macros, taking advantage of the live preview. When I'm done, I copy the definitions into my actual working document, which I edit in vim. I only typeset the entire working document once or twice an hour, if that; vim catches syntax errors. So if LuaTex takes a few seconds longer to do the typesetting, it's completely unimportant. mathew

On 14-3-2011 7:26, Cecil Westerhof wrote:

2011/3/14 Marco

...

On 2011-03-14 Cecil Westerhof wrote:

...

When installing minimals you have MKII, XeTeX and MKIV. I understand that you should normally use MKIV, but when are the other two used?

MKII can be used either with pdftex or xetex (as you wish, compare advantages/disadvantages). MKIV can only be used with luatex.

You have to differ between ConTeXt »versions« (mkii, mkiv) and TeX backends (pdftex, xetex, luatex).

And where do I find the advantages/disadvantages? Or can I just always use MKIV?

As already mentioned speed depends on the kind of document. In general context runs slower with xetex and luatex if only because these are unicode engines while pdftex is 8 bit. Occasionally i do speed tests and it also depends on the operating system, file caching etc. For luatex the size of the cpu cache also matters. Although pdftex/mkiv is always faster unless on eused metapoist in which case mkiv is a clear winner (the metafun manual runs in tens of seconds in mkiv but takes many minutes in mkii. Comparing xetex/mkii and luatex/mkiv is difficult as xetex also pipes its output to a dvi backend. On some tests mkiv is faster, on some others mkii but I must admit that i only tested simple document. On a raw simple document, pdftex can be twice as fast as xetex or luatex. The more lua driven features are used, the slower mkiv becomes but in general it does a better job then. Anyhow .. only luatex/mkiv will evolve so best stick to that. Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | voip: 087 875 68 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------