[XeTeX] Problems with Hebrew in Lucida and Paanana, Peninim.

[Jonathan Kew]

On 26 Aug 2004, at 6:33 pm, Robert Voogdgeert wrote:

> Dear XeTeX users,
>
>
> When using Lucida for typesetting Hebrew some vowel sign are not 
> placed correctly underneath the consonant, e.g. the patach is not 
> posited right underneath the zayin. (Texteditor the same problem 
> occurs: type z followed by option+1 and you'll see that the vowel sign 
> is to left of the consonant instead of underneath it.

Don't you mean that the vowel appears too far to the *right* of the 
consonant? That's how it looks to me (as a non-Hebrew reader).

> It looks like the vowel signs in combination with z(ayin) are placed 
> in the position where it should be in case of other consonants, e.g. 
> b(eth). Strange thing is, that this odd behaviour is absent when used 
> with waw, type u followed by option+1, or yod, type h followed by 
> option+1. So, the problem seems to be related solely to the zayin.)

...and related solely to the Lucida Grande font. This indicates clearly 
that it's a font problem; my guess is that the font contains positional 
variants of the vowel signs, and the AAT tables are not selecting the 
appropriate forms to use with zayin.

This should be reported (preferably by someone who can write 
knowledgeably about Hebrew) to Apple as a bug. There's nothing XeTeX 
can do about it; it's simply rendering the text in accordance with the 
information in the font.

>  This problem was already noticed by others working with other 
> languages of course, but I also noticed that when using Paanana, or 
> Peninim instead of Lucida, the words appear in `pairs' so to speak: 
> they are typeset in sequences of two words followed by an extremely 
> long space. Anyone got a clue?

Could you provide a small sample document that illustrates the "words 
in pairs" issue? I'm not sure what's going on there. (Please be sure to 
use one of the fonts that ships with OS X, or is readily available 
elsewhere, so that I can reproduce the behavior.)

Thanks,

Jonathan