[XeTeX] XeTeX, fontspec, OTF, and fontdimens

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 19.02.2011 um 19:57 schrieb mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca:

>
>> Instead of exotic fonts you can use from TeX Live 2010 the GNU  
>> Freefonts in:
>
> No, I can't.  The document in question is a type specimen, and  
> written in
> a mixture of English and Japanese.  Using a different font would  
> defeat
> the entire purpose; ...

My suggestion was not that you change the font for productive work but  
that you (and we) can test your theory of the different behaviour of  
TT and OT fonts. Which I could not find.

>
> But even if I pretend that the GNU FreeFonts are acceptable, when I  
> try it
> with the OTF version of FreeMono XeTeX still makes the interword space
> stretchable after each LaTeX size command.  Do you have an  
> installation
> that does not do that - where you can use a plain LaTeX font size  
> command
> and have the interword space afterward be scaled to the new size but  
> NOT
> stretchable?

No. I tested all the mono-spaced fonts that are available at the  
moment. The TT font Lucida Sans Typewriter behaves like the others.

>
> A major goal of XeTeX is to support languages other than English -
> including languages such as Japanese that are written in the Han  
> script.
> 地球の人々は全部英語を読みません。Typesetting in  
> such languages is
> traditionally monospace; "don't use monospace fonts" or "accept that
> spacing will be stretchable and therefore wrong when you use monospace
> fonts" are not limitations XeTeX can sustain.  "You must reset the  
> spacing
> after every size change" is a workaround I can live with in the short
> term, but it is not a solution.
>
> It seems clear to me that this is a bug, though I'm not sure yet  
> whether
> it's better considered as a bug in the XeTeX engine or in the fontspec
> package, because it's not clear where the stretchability is being set.

A fix is desirable – have you tested zhspacing (http://code.google.com/p/zhspacing/ 
)? Maybe it has a solution for you...

--
Greetings

   Pete

A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not when there is no  
longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take  
away.
				– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry