[XeTeX] xetex and the unicode bidirectional algorithm.

Zdenek Wagner zdenek.wagner at gmail.com
Thu Dec 5 14:02:12 CET 2013


2013/12/5 Khaled Hosny <khaledhosny at eglug.org>:
> On Thu, Dec 05, 2013 at 12:29:40PM +0100, Zdenek Wagner wrote:
>> 2013/12/5 Khaled Hosny <khaledhosny at eglug.org>:
>> > On Wed, Dec 04, 2013 at 12:31:58AM -0500, C. Scott Ananian wrote:
>> >> On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 5:33 PM, Khaled Hosny <khaledhosny at eglug.org> wrote:
>> >> > On Tue, Dec 03, 2013 at 01:42:21PM -0500, C. Scott Ananian wrote:
>> >> >> Does XeLaTeX implement the Unicode BiDi algorithm?
>> >> >
>> >> > Short answer: no.
>> >> >
>> >> > I think sample documents (minimal working example) are needed for any
>> >> > useful suggestion.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Attached are the first 23 references from
>> >> https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%A5%D8%B3%D8%B7%D9%86%D8%A8%D9%88%D9%84#.D9.85.D8.B5.D8.A7.D8.AF.D8.B1
>> >> (the Arabic wikipedia article on Istanbul), as generated by my XeLaTeX
>> >> formatter.
>> >>
>> >> Things to notice:
>> >> 1) Unicode BiDi algorithm at work in web version in places like
>> >> citation [1], "Statistics of the 2010 Turkey census".  XeLaTeX renders
>> >> this backwards.
>> >
>> > You need to explicitly markup LTR and RTL text, e.g. using polyglossia
>> > or bidi. You need this to enable hyphenation as well, citations 12 and
>> > 13 have very bad spacing because no hyphenation was enabled, for
>> > example. I guess the tool that generates the TeX file will have to do
>> > that.
>> >
>> >> 2) Broken italic for arabic in GNU freefont in citation [2].
>> >> (straightforward to fix)
>> >
>> > Please, please, please, never ever use GNU free font for Arabic; it is
>> > the most hideous, crappy and useless un-Arabic font ever created, my
>> > blood boils every time I see it in use.
>> >
>> Could you summarize what is wrong and report it?
>
> All of it, the Arabic range is utter crap.
>
>> Steve White will
>> certainly fix it (unless it is better toreplace the whole Arabic
>> block).
>
> I did, and even offered to work on replacement, but the offer was turned
> down.
>
>> I see problems with dochachmee he, Urdu words as بھآرت and ؔٹھیک are
>> not displayed properly.
>
> There is no point in looking at the microlevel, the whole thing is
> worthless garbage and should be tossed in the nearest trash bin. Whoever
> designed it has absolutely no idea about Arabic and its design, I take
> it personally and find this garbage an insult to the Arabic script. Show
> a text typeset with it to an Urdu speaker and he is likely to vomit in
> disgust.
>
It is pitty to know this. Although I have a book of Arabic calligraphy
collected by a native Arabic calligrapher, I do not know Arabic and
even do not know Urdu, I can sometimes read parts of Urdu texts and I
can recognize that some characters are not correctly connected. This
font is useful for me in the text editor if I type multilingual text
containing Czech, English, Hindi and Urdu. If I do not use FreeSerif,
the editor automatically selects some Arabic font which lacks Urdu
characters. Of course, in XeTeX I use Nafees fonts for Urdu.

> Regards,
> Khaled
>
>
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-- 
Zdeněk Wagner
http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz



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