[XeTeX] XeLaTex and Armenian

[Khaled Hosny]

On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 12:23:40PM -0700, Apostolos Syropoulos wrote:
> > But then Latin ligatures, kerning or  other OpenType feature will not be
> > activated, you still have to  set different  script (and may be language)
> > for each script, so using a single  or a group of  fonts makes no
> > practical difference.
>  
> I don't think so. Kerning belongs to a different subtable and is independent 
> from scripts or languages. Also, the liga feature is defined for all character
> combinations. For example, in  Garamond Premiere Pro the liga sub-subtable
> includes the lambda_lambda and ffi ligatures. IMHO, separating these
> things is an indication of poor design.

No, all OpenType features are bound to a script/language, If you have
and Arabic/English font, chances are odd that font designer would attach
f-ligatures or Latin kerning to Arabic script, so if you set script to
Arabic and type fi or AV you will neither get the ligature nor the
kerning.

Some smart layout engines (e.g. Pango) will itemize the text into script
runs and set the proper script/language for each run, XeTeX leaves it to
the user to markup his text by selecting different font/features for
different runs of text.

Regards,
 Khaled

-- 
 Khaled Hosny
 Arabic localiser and member of Arabeyes.org team
 Free font developer