[tex-live] Xetex examples

[Ken Brown]

On 5/13/2009 5:30 AM, François Charette wrote:
> Ken Brown a écrit :
>> Does TL2008 come with any examples of xetex or xelatex files that can
>> be typeset using only the fonts supplied by texlive?  I'm curious to
>> try out xetex, which I've never used before, but almost every example
>> I try gives me errors about fonts that are not installed.
>>
>> For example, if I run xelatex on
>> texmf-dist/doc/xelatex/polyglossia/example-arabic.tex, I get an error
>> about Junicode.  If I edit the file and replace "Junicode" by "Latin
>> Modern Roman", the compilation gets a little further but then
>> complains about Inconsolata.  I can replace "Inconsolata" by
>> "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono" and get a complaint about Lucida Sans
>> Unicode. And so on.
> 
> This is not something that the maintainers of TeXLive have any influence on.
> 
> But being the author of polyglossia (and hence of the example file you
> mention), I would simply say that in general, there is little point in
> providing example files for XeTeX that would strictly rely on fonts one
> can assume to be available on most systems. Even a full TeXLive
> installation won't give you a readily-available font for Arabic, for
> instance. I agree however that in that particular example file I could
> easily get rid of some irrelevant fonts (I'll simplify that for the next
> release!). Yet, since all example files also come with a pdf, by looking
> at the source and comparing it with the result, you should be able to
> get a fairly good idea. In any case, these files are meant to supplement
> the polyglossia manual, which itself assumes the reader has a basic
> knowledge of Xe(La)TeX.
> 
> If you want an introduction to XeTeX, have a look at the fontspec
> manual. Other useful resources are:
> http://xml.web.cern.ch/XML/lgc2/xetexmain.pdf (The XeTeX Companion)
> http://scholarsfonts.net/xetex-4.pdf (a new tutorial)
> and the XeTeX mailing list: http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex
> I also recommend
> http://linuxlibertine.sourceforge.net/Libertine-XeTex-EN.pdf (the source
> code is included as an appendix).

Thanks very much for the references.

>> I think my fontconfig setup is probably OK, because xelatex does find
>> "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono" and "Latin Modern Roman".
> Windows and Mac users do not have Bitstream Vera Sans Mono... which
> shows how vain it would be to attempt providing meaningful XeTeX example
> files that would also be fully "portable".

Regards,

Ken