[XeTeX] CJK goodies in XeLaTeX

[Wilfred van Rooijen]

Hello,

I see that zhspacing only works with Xetex 0.997,
which I don't have. Too bad, it would've been an easy
solution to have ruby in xetex.

Cheers,
Wilfred

--- Yin Dian <yindian at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> On Jan 10, 2008 9:50 AM, Wilfred van Rooijen
> <wvanrooijen at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Hello all,
> >
> > I am a new addition to the XeTeX list.
> >
> > A couple of weeks ago a discussion started on the
> > Dutch latex user group about setting Japanese with
> > latex. Since I consider learning and reading
> Japanese
> > a hobby, the discussion was interesting for me.
> >
> > In 2002 I had the pleasure of working in Japan for
> a
> > while. I had to write a paper for a conference, in
> > Latex with Japanese. At that time I used ptex, the
> > 'patched' latex that is capable of reading EUC-JP
> > input. This was teTeX 2.2 time, and I installed
> > everything from scratch on Turbolinux. I remember
> that
> > it did work but especially the font trickery took
> some
> > time to get to work. Nowadays, I mainly use
> OpenOffice
> > to write Japanese (I have to write essays for my
> > class).
> >
> > But being a latex afficionado I decided it was
> time to
> > research once and for all the possibilities of
> > non-latin typesetting in Japanese. After some
> > wikipedia'ing en several google sessions, I
> understand
> > the basics of character encodings etc.
> >
> > So I researched the latex options and came across
> the
> > usual suspects:
> >
> > - CJK packages. Seems to work well, full support
> for
> > ruby and associated tricks, many languages per
> > document, but issues remain with character coding,
> > preprocessors, and the need to explicitly switch
> > between languages and fonts
> There is a package xCJK, by Mr. Sun Wen-chang, which
> allows you to use
> the CJK package's way to handle CJK typesetting
> issues, once you set
> \XeTeXinputencoding to "bytes". Other CJK-dependent
> packages such as
> CJKpunct and ruby should work pretty well with it.
> You can find xCJK
> at this thread:
> http://bbs.ctex.org/viewthread.php?tid=40232
> (register
> required to download).
> >
> > - latex + UCS. Using the correct combination of
> > inputenc and fontenc seems to work, but no line
> breaks
> > in CJK for instance, and very minimal
> documentation.
> > Also availability of fonts is an issue. CJK
> limited to
> > one character set per document.
> >
> > - Omega/lambda + j-omega + dvipdfmx. Some
> non-trivial
> > patches are needed to work correctly, but once it
> > works unicode input is straightforward. Again,
> some
> > issues with fonts remain, and there is no special
> > support for CJK typesetting. But: no longer
> developed
> >
> > - Hans Hagen pointed me to XeTeX, and after some
> > browsing in my texlive I am now able to use it. I
> have
> > installed a bunch of Japanese ttf-files in my home
> dir
> > and it works pretty well. It is definitely the
> best
> > solution to typeset unicode input in a
> straightforward
> > manner to a pdf.
> >
> > So the question is: are there any CJK goodies for
> > XeTeX yet, like \ruby or so? Also, it seems to me
> that
> The nruby.sty requires little change to work with
> XeTeX and zhspacing
> (a package for typesetting Chinese). Here's the
> patch.
> --- nruby.sty~  1994-02-12 23:00:00.000000000 +0800
> +++ nruby.sty   2008-01-10 16:32:05.000000000 +0800
> @@ -69,7 +69,7 @@
>  \def\bx at sparse[#1]#2{\hbox to#1{\op at sparse{#2}}}
>  \def\op at sparse#1{\sparse at skip%
>   \@ifundefined{jintercharskip}{%
> - \kanjiskip=0pt plus 1fil\xkanjiskip=\kanjiskip
> #1}{%
> + \def\skipzh{\hskip 0pt plus
> 1fil}\let\skipenzh=\skipzh #1}{%
>   \jintercharskip=0pt plus
> 1fil\jasciikanjiskip=\jintercharskip
>  #1}\sparse at skip}
>  %
> 
> > support for vertical typesetting is necessary. I
> don't
> > think the 'trick' of rotating the characters and
> then
> > rotating a box on the page will always give a good
> > result (「 and 」could pose problems).
> Rotating really works. The punctuation change
> requires the font in use
> to support Opentype feature +valt or +vhal. A
> typical font setting is
> as follows:
>
\newfontfamily\myfont[RawFeature={vertical:+vert:+vhal}]{font
> name}
> > What about punctuation symbols in the margin? And
> how
> > about kerning? Is that handled by the font itself?
> If the font support Opentype feature +halt and you
> do want to use
> halfwidth punctuations, then there's nothing more
> needed than applying
> the feature. However, if your font doesn't have
> halfwith alternatives
> or you want to use fullwidth punctuations, then
> something special
> should be done to deal with the inter-char tokens
> between punctuations
> and other characters etc. You can refer to
> zhspacing, which already
> solved the problem for Chinese typesetting. (XeTeX
> 0.997 in
> development is required to utilize the inter-char
> token feature.)
> >
> > I'd be happy to help if I can contribute anything.
> That's great. Always welcome:)
> 
> My package zhspacing currently doesn't deal with
> fonts or
> prohibitions(kinsoku) for Japanese kanas, so it may
> not be suitable
> for Japanese typesetting. There is a package
> jspacing for dealing with
> Japanese in XeTeX, but it seems that it's not open
> to public for
> download and I couldn't get it.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Wilfred van Rooijen
> >
> Regards.
> 
> -YIN Dian
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