[Dev-luatex] Q: Can LuaTeX produce xdv?

[Jonathan Fine]

Arthur Reutenauer wrote:
>> As subject.  xdv is the eXtended DVi format used by XeTeX.
> 
>   Actually, it can.  LuaTeX produces DVI, which is perfectly palatable
> to XeTeX's xdv2pdf and xdvipdfmx.  What features of xdv are you missing
> in LuaTeX's output?

Knuth and MacKay were the first to extent DVI, because it does not 
adequately support bidirectional typesetting.

Are you saying, Arthur, that
    Source to PDF using LuaTeX directly
can proceed via
    Source to DVI using LuaTeX
and then
    DVI to PDF using xdv2pdf (or some other tool)
?

I've been told (by Hans Hagen) that even for pdfTeX this is not advisable.

I'm looking for a what might be called a Unicode savvy Device 
Independent binary format.  And I'm looking for XeTeX and LuTeX to share 
code and ideas, when possible.

I'm copying Jonathan Kew (XeTeX's developer in on this).

-- 
Jonathan