[XeTeX] Missing ligatures (0.997)

[Jonathan Kew]

On 31 Jul 2007, at 2:00 pm, Stephen Moye wrote:

> Still, I'm curious: Would there be some way of getting XeTeX to  
> treat the Lucida Bright tfm-based
> fonts in the same way that it supports the Computer Modern fonts?  
> If I typeset this, relying
> solely on the tfm-based Lucida installation (from TUG):
>
> %%
>
> %!TEX TS-program = xelatex
>
> \documentclass{article}
>
> \RequirePackage[mathitalic2,expert,nolucidascale]{lucidabr}
> \RequirePackage[T1]{fontenc}
>
> \begin{document}
>
> This is a simple finite test. $x^2+y^2=z^2$
>
> \end{document}
>
> %%
>
> The math comes out right (in LB), but the text appears as a generic  
> sans serif, meaning,
> I take it, that the metrics were found (the 'fi' of 'finite'  
> appears as a box in the preview)
> but not the outlines...

Does the LB package rely on virtual fonts (.vf) for T1-encoded text,  
etc? I believe so. xdv2pdf does not support .vf fonts, but xdvipdfmx  
should be OK with them. If you've got a LB setup that works with  
pdftex, it's presumably using .pfb fonts along with the .tfms, .vfs,  
etc; xetex+xdvipdfmx should also be able to handle those.

xetex+xdv2pdf: can use "classic" LWFN fonts when you access "Lucida  
Bright" by name as a Mac font, but can't handle .vf fonts. Should  
work for text (but the LWFN fonts don't specify ligatures, etc,  
though "fi" and "fl" may be there as characters at their MacRoman  
codes). Won't work for .vf-based packages, which I think is the case  
for lucidabr.

xetex+xdvipdfmx: can't handle LWFN fonts, so it won't work with your  
classic version of Lucida Bright, but is fine with .pfb; supports .vf  
fonts. So it should support the same tfm+vf+pfb-based lucidabr setup  
as standard TeX, provided your .map files are correct.

JK