[XeTeX] Grave accent character U0060 in XeTeX?

[Jonathan Kew]

On 16 Oct 2007, at 11:33 am, J P Blevins wrote:

> I hope that this is not too far off-topic, but can anyone suggest a
> strategy for printing a grave accent character (not as a combining
> diacritic) in XeTeX. I realize that this is a more general TeX issue
> and that the character is not used in typesetting, but it is used in
> the Finno-Ugric IPA, and the smart single quote alternative is used
> with an opposite meaning ...
>
> I would be prepared to give up the use of ` ' to enter single quotes,
> if necessary, but it would be nice to be able to represent the smart
> quote in the text font (Aldus nova, in this case).

If you're prepared to use the proper Unicode quotes and dashes in  
your input text, then you don't need the tex-text font mapping, which  
is what converts ` (U+0060) to ‘ (U+2018), `` to “, etc. If you load  
the font without any font mapping, the input characters will simply  
print as themselves.

On the other hand, if you still want to use ``...'' for double  
quotes, --- for em-dash, etc., you could make a modified form of the  
tex-text mapping file which supports these, but omits the mapping for  
the ` in isolation. Then you'd need to enter a literal ‘, or  
something like \char"2018, to print the single opening quote.

Another possibility would be to use U+02CB, the grave from the  
Spacing Modifier Letters block. In fact, that might be the most  
appropriate choice for Finno-Ugric IPA.... I'm not really sure  
offhand. Nor do I know if Aldus Nova would support this character.

JK