[XeTeX] \font usage

[Jonathan Kew]

On 13 May 2006, at 5:45 pm, Wlodek Bzyl wrote:

>     In plain.tex
>     in order to prepare TeX for using `Minion Pro' Regular I use
>
>        \font \X = "Minion Pro/Regular"

It should be sufficient to use the family name here:

	\font\X = "Minion Pro"

To give a family + style, you use a hyphen (not slash) to separate  
them, so that would be

	\font\X = "Minion Pro-Regular"

The slash that you may have seen in some examples introduces  
"modifier flags" that are not actually part of the font name, but  
extra directive to XeTeX. In particular, /B asks XeTeX to look for a  
bold style in the given family, and /I looks for an italic style (and  
so /BI or /IB should find bold italic). These are supposed to  
identify appropriate styles even if the names are not actually "Bold"  
and "Italic" (they might be "Heavy" and "Oblique", for instance).

>     To use Bold Italic I tried
>
>        \font \Y = "Minion Pro/Bold Italic"
>
>     But `\Y' switches to Bold.

Yes, it would (see above). Unrecognized flag characters after the  
slash will be ignored.

	\font\Y = "Minion Pro/BI"

should give you bold italic. Or you can say "Minion Pro-Bold  
Italic" (I expect).

>     What about extending the syntax of \font primitive, to
>     use `Bold Italic'?
>
>
>     I am using the latest Linux version of XeTeX.
>     On my system there are two URW Gothic fonts:
>
>        URW Gothic L:style=Demi
>        URW Gothic L:style=Demi Oblique
>
>     (fc-list | egrep Gothic)
>
>     What is the correct way of preparing TeX to
>     use Demi Oblique variant of URW Gothic L font?
>
>     I would like if possible to use
>
>        \font \Z = "URW Gothic L:style=Demi Oblique"
>
>     but it doesn't work. Log file contains
>
>        Unknown feature `style=Demi Oblique' in font `URW Gothic L  
> Book'.

Right; the colon ends the font name (and style modifiers) and  
introduces the list of AAT or OpenType features.

Either
	\font\Z = "URW Gothic L/BI"
or
	\font\Z = "URW Gothic L-Demi Oblique"
should work.

However, I just tried this on my Linux machine and it doesn't work  
reliably.... partly, at least, because the only version of URW Gothic  
L present (on my system, at least) is in .pfb format, which XeTeX  
doesn't handle well. I think if it were .otf, it would work properly.

I'll try to fix some of the issues with .pfb fonts.....

>     And the final question: Where is the syntax of the \font
>     primitive implemented?

You'll find the code in the file XeTeX_ext.c, if I remember right.

JK