[XeTeX] XeTeX 0.99 released

[Jonathan Kew]

On 6 Dec 2005, at 7:51 pm, Stephen Moye wrote:

>> * true glyph height and depth information available for native fonts,
>> when using \XeTeXglyph; this means you can get character ht/dp as
>> well, by mapping the character code to a glyph ID and then measuring
>> this: \hbox{\XeTeXglyph\XeTeXcharglyph`g} will be a box with the
>> correct height and depth of "g" in the current native font
>
> A couple of questions. What is a 'native font'? I am presuming that  
> it is an AAT font. If I say
>
> \font\test="Hoefler Text" at 12pt \test
>
> then your example works;

Yes; sorry, I suppose that's my personal terminology. A "native font"  
in XeTeX-speak is a font that is installed "natively" on the host  
operating system platform, as opposed to a traditional TeX font that  
lives (as .tfm and .pfb or .pk or whatever) in the texmf tree, and is  
unknown to the underlying platform.

> if I use the default CM then I get this series of errors:

Yes, as the CM fonts are TFM-based TeX fonts, not native platform- 
installed fonts...

>
> This is XeTeX, Version 3.141592-2.2-0.99 (Web2C 7.5.3)
> entering extended mode
> (./newxetest.tex
> ! Invalid use of \XeTeXglyph.
> l.5  \setbox0=\hbox{\XeTeXglyph
>                                \XeTeXcharglyph`g }

...so this error message is correct (if you ask for "h"elp at that  
point, it should explain a little further)...

> ? ! You can't use `\XeTeXcharglyph' in restricted horizontal mode.
> l.5  \setbox0=\hbox{\XeTeXglyph\XeTeXcharglyph
>                                               `g }
> ?

...though this one seems misleading; I should look into this.

>
> I don't have any OpenType here to experiment with, but will this  
> work with OpenType?

Yes; as noted above, it'll work with any "native" font, i.e., the  
ones installed in Library/Fonts and accessed without use of TFMs.

>
> XeTeX seems awfully slow. It takes a long time (several seconds)  
> for the typesetting to begin and several more seconds for the  
> typeset page to appear. It seems much slower than version 0.98.  
> (All this is on 10.4.3, a Mac G5 DP).

Hmmm.... that's curious. It doesn't take that long on my G4 machines!  
Care to swap? ;-)

I can understand a somewhat slower startup, perhaps, if you have very  
large numbers of fonts installed; how many does Font Book report?  
Still, I wouldn't have thought it should be that bad.

JK