[XeTeX] xunicode.sty -- pinyin and TIPA shortcuts

[Will Robertson]

On 07/04/2006, at 11:17 , Robert Spence wrote:

> Does anyone have an out-of-the-box solution for this?

You could use font mappings to solve this problem. You'll need to  
grab TECkit linked from the XeTeX website somewhere...look at the tex- 
text.map/.tec files for how to do it. If you haven't come across font  
mappings yet, they let you substitute runs of chars for others at the  
last instant before typesetting. This is used to emulate Computer  
Modern's ligatures: `` -> “ '' -> ” , etc.

You're a bit unclear whether there is such a letter as "g that looks  
like spectacles" vs. "g like you (or I, at least) write". If they are  
separate characters, and have specific unicode characters, then you'd  
be best entering in the correct glyphs in the source.

If this is just a crappy font support thing (as in, you want to use  
so-and-so font for typesetting phonetics but its "g" looks incorrect  
for this usage), its definitely like a problem that must be solved by  
the font vendors. Ideally in this case there would be a font feature,  
activated by fontspec as something like "\addfontfeature{style=tipag}".

But I re-iterate, this would not be the way it should be done if the  
two characters are distinct.

> And does this (admittedly almost maximally minor) problem relate to  
> the issue of fallback fonts mentioned in Malte Rosenau's XeTeX list  
> posting of 06/04/2006 ?

I wouldn't think so...

> P.S.  I just saw Will Robertson's latest posting in which he  
> suggests a "xetipa" package.. ("Curiouser and curiouser!")

Well, not for me to contribute new material too -- I just don't  
understand what the purpose of xunicode is exactly. It it's just to  
collect together a huge number of TeX macros to easy unicode  
typesetting, then I guess it should contain the TIPA stuff. On the  
other hand, where do you draw the line between accessing unicode  
characters/accents with glyphs and lots of intricate shorthands?

Will

P.S.  Thanks for the compliment on my colour choice for those  
letters. If I ever start a multinational corporation, I'm considering  
giving it that name and logo :)