[XeTeX] Vertical Japanese in memoir with fontspec

[Michiel Kamermans]

Vafa,

> I almost know nothing about vertical typesetting but can not you do 
> vertical typesetting by some rotation?

Yes and no. For the normal syllabic scripts and chinese characters, you 
can. However, there are also half-height OR half-width characters, 
depending on the writing direction. In horizontal writing, しゃく has a 
half-height や, but in vertical writing, it would be し on top, then a 
half-width や, and then a く. Punctuation is radically different too. 
For instance, これは日本語です。 ends with the symbol [。], which is 
essentially a circle in a quad's lower-left quadrant. For vertical 
writing, this is instead [︒], with the circle in the upper-right 
quadrant. Quotation, too, is different, with 「これ」 being horizontal 
style, but vertically being written as ﹁, then こ, then れ, then ﹂. 
These are not just "rotated" but having different glyph metrics in 
vertical form.

In fact, almost all (proper) CJK fonts rely heavily on the vert/vrt2 
features to indicate glyph substitution in vertical mode, and has been a 
bit of a bother up until basically today still =)

(hopefully fontspec 2, once all open issues are resolved, will have 
solved that =)

- Mike "Pomax" Kamermans
nihongoresources.com