[XeTeX] XeTeX and Classical Mongolian

[Thomas T. Pedersen]

On 4/10-2004, at 11.54, Jonathan Kew wrote:
>
> I'm afraid it just won't work, for now. There's no Mongolian script 
> shaping engine in XeTeX at this point (so "script=mong" is ignored). 
> And the default engine used for Latin, etc., won't work because it 
> applies the features you specify to *all* the glyphs. But for 
> Mongolian you need the engine to understand the script and apply 
> *different* features to each glyph depending on its context.
>
> XeTeX is using the ICU layout library 
> <http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/> for OpenType support, so you could 
> file a bug report/feature request regarding Mongolian support there, 
> and it may eventually become available.
>
> Sorry to disappoint you. If there's an AAT-enabled Mongolian font 
> available, that would work, as the AAT model puts all the behavior 
> into the font tables, requiring no script-specific support in the 
> application.
>
> (Any volunteers to write the OT shaping code? ICU is open-source.....)

Thank you for describing how XeTeX gets its OpenType support. I'll take 
a look at the ICU site and maybe file a report.

For those of you interested, the script should actually be vertical 
which makes it quite a challenge for any display/rendering engine.

Using Code2000, this is what the sample text should look like, though 
it should be rotated 90 degrees clockwise:
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An alternative is the MonTeX package available from CTAN which should 
have minimal Unicode support. I have downloaded it but not installed it 
yet.


Best regards
Thomas T. Pedersen
http://ee.www.ee/transliteration/