[XeTeX] Font sizes in footnotes, and dashes

[Tara Andrews]

Hi,

I am a newcomer to XeTeX and to TeX in general; so far it has proven  
to be exactly what I was looking for before I made my long-overdue  
switch to LaTeX.  I have two problems remaining that I've been unable  
to figure out, and am hoping someone on this list can help.

The first is to do with font sizes.  I have the following commands  
defined:
\usepackage{fontspec}
\font\armfont="Mshtakan"
\def\arm#1{{\armfont #1}}

which work fine for the body text.  When I want to have Armenian text  
within a footnote, e.g.
\footnote{The number 471 is rendered in Armenian as \arm{XXX} ...}
% in the real source, I have Armenian characters in the place of XXX.

Using the \arm command here causes the Armenian text to be the same  
size as the body text, rather than the same size as the footnote  
text.  I am unsure how best to get the Armenian text size to scale  
down to the default footnote size.

The second problem is that when I use UTF-8 em-dashes, word  
separation becomes confused.  Is there any way to let the relevant  
program (be it XeTeX, TeX, or whatever) know that it is okay to split  
a word on the em-dash, and that a hyphen is not needed?

Thanks!

-tara