[XeTeX] .otf files

Jonathan Kew jonathan_kew at sil.org
Tue Aug 17 18:34:36 CEST 2004


On 17 Aug 2004, at 5:14 pm, Yves Codet wrote:

>> Of course, if you really want to use both Archaic fonts and 
>> Unicode-compliant AAT or OpenType fonts within a single document, 
>> this may not help much. Unfortunately, trying to merge those two 
>> worlds--the "old" world of text in custom 8-bit encodings and fonts 
>> in mf/pk formats and the "new" world of Unicode data and 
>> Unicode-encoded AAT/OT fonts--is not simple or transparent. XeTeX has 
>> its roots firmly on the Unicode side of the fence.
>
> I understand, but some of us will have a difficulty, which doesn't 
> pertain to XeTeX, but to Unicode. I was rewriting lessons on Greek and 
> Latin historical linguistics when I heard of XeTeX, and it was a very 
> good thing for me since I don't have anymore to decipher my source 
> files, which contained things like this:
> 	*d\textipa{\r*m}n$h_2$\textipa{\r*n}ti
> Not very easy to read. But when I came to a chapter about the history 
> of Greek and Latin alphabets, I met the problem which motivated my 
> question. I think Phoenician is a good example. I read somewhere that 
> some specialists consider that there's only one north-western Semitic 
> alphabet, which can be represented by Hebrew, and that there's no need 
> to encode Phoenician separately. It seems quite sensible and Unicode 
> people might well subscribe to this view. But what if one needs to 
> *show* Phoenician letters?

If you have (or find, or make!) a font that includes Phoenician 
letters, and that can be installed and used directly in Mac OS X (which 
is not the case for .mf sources, or the .pk fonts created from them), 
then you'd be able to use that font in XeTeX. There are several ways 
such a font (a .ttf, perhaps) might be set up:

- with the Phoenician letters encoded at the Hebrew Unicode 
values--this would be a possible Unicode-compliant approach

- with Phoenician letters in place of ASCII letters (lots of old 
"hacked" fonts for unusual scripts are done this way--the associated 
text is not correct Unicode, of course, but it's a time-honored way to 
get arbitrary glyphs onto the page)

- with Phoenician letters encoded in the Unicode Private Use Area (like 
traditional Windows "symbol" fonts)

Depending which of these options is used, you'd need different 
character codes in your TeX source, perhaps accessed through macros 
with convenient names, but that's no different from the "old" TeX way 
of dealing with arbitrarily-encoded fonts.

(Actually, in the specific case of Phoenician, I think there has been a 
decision to encode Phoenician separately from Hebrew, but it will take 
some time before this is finally standardized, let alone implemented.)

So I'd suggest you consider looking for existing fonts (most likely old 
.ttf fonts from the Windows world) that contain the characters you 
need, and try using these rather than the .mf-derived "Archaic" ones.

Hope this helps,

Jonathan

>  If the text is meant to be printed or distributed as PDF, the old TeX 
> is a solution, as you suggest. Otherwise I thought of no better way 
> than creating pictures (perhaps with a tex-to-html tool), though I'm 
> rather scared at the idea of filling a LaTeX table with pictures (like 
> twenty five \includegraphics for each table, and as I never did that 
> I'm not sure it can work). I also planned to make an XML version of 
> those lessons, and for that version I guess there's no other way than 
> to use pictures.
>
> Though this not XeTeX's problem, it may be a problem for some of its 
> users. If you know of a better solution than what I tried and 
> described above, it would be a great help.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Yves
>
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