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 (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 lapt ...

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 ...

encoding by default. XeTeX can use any fonts installed in the operating system without configuring TeX font metrics, and can make direct use of advanced typographic features of

AAT AAT or Aat may refer to: Aviation * Asia Airfreight Terminal, Hong Kong International Airport * Altay Airport, Xinjiang, China * Location identifier for Alturas Municipal Airport, California, United States Biochemistry * Alpha 1-antitrypsin, ...

and

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 Swash, or forewash in geography, is a turbulent layer of water that washes up on the beach after an incoming wave has broken. The swash action can move beach materials up and down the beach, which results in the cross-shore sediment exchange. T ...

, optional or historic

ligatures Ligature may refer to: * Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture used to shut off a blood vessel or other anatomical structure ** Ligature (orthodontic), used in dentistry * Ligature (music), an element of musical notation used especially in the me ...

, 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 seri ...

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 in ...

(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 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

. * xdvipdfmx, a modified version of

dvipdfmx 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 in ...

, 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 (angiosper ...

and ConTeXt 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 MacTeX is a free redistribution of TeX Live, a typesetting environment based on TeX. While TeX Live is designed to be cross-platform (running on Unix, macOS, and Windows), MacTeX includes Mac-specific utilities and front-ends (such as TeXShop a ...

MiKTeX MiKTeX is a free and open-source distribution of the TeX/LaTeX typesetting system for Microsoft Windows (and for Mac and certain Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Debian and Fedora). It also contains a set of related programs. MiKTeX provid ...

and

Lyx LyX (styled as ; pronounced ) (Based on 3 developers, they say it can be pronounced "Licks", "Lucks" and "Leeks") is an open source, graphical user interface document processor based on the LaTeX typesetting system. Unlike most word processors, ...

(see the

History History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...

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; Walte ...

. 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 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

only in April 2004 with built-in

and

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, which i ...

was announced, which was ported to Microsoft Windows by Akira Kakuto a few months later, and finally included into TeX Live 2007 for all major platforms. XeTeX is also supported by

LyX LyX (styled as ; pronounced ) (Based on 3 developers, they say it can be pronounced "Licks", "Lucks" and "Leeks") is an open source, graphical user interface document processor based on the LaTeX typesetting system. Unlike most word processors, ...

since version 2.0 and shipped with

since version 2.7. As of the inclusion in TeX Live, XeTeX supports most macro packages written for

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, ...

fonts without any specific setup procedure. Version 0.998 announced at BachoTeX 2008 supports Unicode normalization via the \XeTeXinputnormalization command. Version 0.9999, released in May 2013, switched from

ICU ICU commonly refers to: * Intensive care unit, a special department of a hospital ICU may also refer to: Organisations Universities * Information and Communications University, South Korea *Istanbul Commerce University, Istanbul, Turkey * Intern ...

Layout Engine to HarfBuzz for

layout, and Graphite2 engine for

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 The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are deve ...

framework instead of ATSUI on Mac OS X.

Mode of operation

Example

Arabic support

Features

History

See also

References

Further reading

External links