[XeTeX] Hoefler italics and diacritics oddity

Ross Moore ross at maths.mq.edu.au
Tue Jun 22 01:49:19 CEST 2004


Hi Jonathan,

On 22/06/2004, at 8:21 AM, Jonathan Kew wrote:

> However, you may still find that you get line-final swashes in places 
> you don't want them, such as before a word marked with your 
> "transliterated" macro, as the commands you're inserting will still 
> have the effect of breaking text runs that are handed to ATSUI for 
> rendering. But at least it won't be happening mid-word.

Can I presume from this that words entered in the source such as:    
f\"ur
where the \"u  expands in macros to a Unicode glyph  ^^^^????   
(whatever the number is)
is treated by XeTeX as a single word ?

Put another way, is it true that ...

   1.  XeTeX handles the token stream *after* macro expansions?
   2.  This is done by replacing TeX's paragraph formatting structures,
       i.e. line- and page-breaking algorithms.

I cannot see how it could be otherwise, but please confirm this.

Of course, what this means is that with the LaTeX encoding-based method
of handling accents, as I described in an earlier message, then it is
possible to get searchable Unicode output of words containing accents
and (Unicode-supported) diacritics, using just the old-style 7-bit LaTeX
input source files.
(This is something that has been requested, if I recall correctly.)
Presumably alternate forms of accented characters are also possible
  --- provided the font supports it.


> Whether the end result is appropriate, or whether you're better off 
> disabling the line-edge swashes altogether, is for you to judge when 
> you see how it looks.
>
> Jonathan
>
>>
>> On 22 Jun 2004, at 00:40, Jonathan Kew wrote:
>>
>>> The \d macro ends up breaking up the text into separate runs, and so 
>>> you get line-final swash forms (and potentially line-initial swashes 
>>> afterwards). You can disable these by adding "Smart Swashes=!Line 
>>> Final Swashes,!Line Initial Swashes" to the font definition.

Are dot-under letters directly supported in Unicode ?
(Maybe just some of them, not all.)
Or will these diacritics always break-up words, due to
the box-constructions otherwise required to produce them ?



>>>
>>> Of course, you might *want* the smart swashes; in the appropriate 
>>> places, they look good. But if you have lots of macros or other 
>>> special items breaking up your lines of text, they'll appear in all 
>>> sorts of unwanted places, and you're better off disabling them.
>>>
>>> HTH,


Cheers,

	Ross


------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ross Moore                                         ross at maths.mq.edu.au
Mathematics Department                             office: E7A-419
Macquarie University                               tel: +61 +2 9850 8955
Sydney, Australia                                  fax: +61 +2 9850 8114
------------------------------------------------------------------------



More information about the XeTeX mailing list