[XeTeX] Vertically writing of Japanese in XeLaTeX

[Jonathan Kew]

On 21 Jul 2007, at 11:57 am, Gerrit Sangel wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I just wanted to ask how I can typeset an Asian text (in my case  
> Japanese)
> vertically? I saw this in one example pdf, but I didn’t see  
> the .tex file.

There's a Chinese example that can be set either horizontally or  
vertically available from the XeTeX site at <http://scripts.sil.org/ 
xetex_download>; look for "Sample of Chinese typesetting...". You  
might need to change font declarations to suit what you have  
available. (And be aware that not all CJK fonts include vertical  
metrics, so results may vary.)

> Either way, I think it was done in TeX directly, but I want to use  
> LaTeX.

Yes, it was, but at least it shows a general technique that you might  
be able to adapt.

> Is there a command for it? Like \vertically or something like that? ;)

I'm not aware of anyone who's done LaTeX-specific support. The basic  
idea is that you add the feature "vertical" to the font declaration;  
this causes the text to be set with 90°-rotated glyphs; then you  
counter-rotate the whole box (or whole page), which in LaTeX you  
could presumably do with \rotatebox or something from the graphicx  
package.

>
> And can I include it in a minipage or so, so I won’t set the entire  
> document
> vertically?

That certainly should be possible, using the technique suggested  
above; but again, I don't know of a ready-made package to do it.

JK