[XeTeX] [MacTeX] Re: A Zapfish request (was Re: [] XeTeX)

[Ross Moore]

Hi Will,

On 14/04/2004, at 11:20 PM, William F. Adams wrote:

> Ross, do you mind my forwarding this on to the mactex list?
>
> Let me know, or do it yourself in your response.

  OK; this is going to the list now.
  I've added just a few comments near the end.

>
> Thanks!
>
> On Wednesday, April 14, 2004, at 03:13  AM, Ross Moore wrote:
>
>> I've attached a PDF below.
>> There are a few adjustments, to the font size, page-height etc.
>> (Also, replaced Plaice + Haralambous with Kew :-)
>
> Good point ;)
>
>>>>> The ``the'' ligature _does_ get used, so there's that much of an 
>>>>> improvement over Jaguar, but only when ``the'' occurs _within_ a 
>>>>> line, not at the beginning.
>>
>> OK, I see that. How is it controlled ?
>>   --- internally, by Apple or the font-renderer, of course.
>> I tried putting all kinds of glue, penalties, \phantom, etc. on the 
>> line,
>> but to no effect, because these won't put anything into the PDF.
>
> No, what happens is xetex passes a string to AAT which passes back a 
> composed line --- that the ``the'' is at the beginning of a line is 
> part of the information passed.
>
> You could turn off the ``the'' ligature by grouping ``th{}e'' should 
> work, or probably by putting \vbox{the}, but getting it at the 
> beginning of a line is going to require something explicit --- perhaps 
> ``\noboundarychar{}the''? (assuming such a thing exists).
>
>>> If nothing else, it'll be a faster way for me to try out alternate 
>>> characters than clicking through TextEdit.app or InDesign's Glyph 
>>> palette.
>>
>> Like an extended font-table ?
>> What syntax would you use ?
>>      \char<num>  with <num>  > 255
>>      e.g. \char"xxx ?
>
> That's a very good question.
>
> I built a weird encoding to handle arbitrary up-to-three character 
> combinations and alternates for my hack.
>
> You'd probably need to pass in something to AAT via something like a 
> \special mechanism.

Why \special's ?
Now that Jonathan is on-board, he can extend \char experimentally,
just for XeTeX --- unless there is already an accepted way
used by Omega, which then should be employed here too.
Something like  \char U+xxxx for a specific Unicode code-point ?

But this wouldn't cover alternates.
Can a font like Zapfino be relied upon to have a natural ordering
for its glyphs; e.g. an encoding vector covering the whole font?
Or are the glyphs identified only by name, with encoding vectors
just a derived concept for use with embedded subsets ?


Cheers

	Ross

>
> William
>
> -- 
> William Adams, publishing specialist
> voice - 717-731-6707 | Fax - 717-731-6708
> www.atlis.com
>
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ross Moore                                         ross at maths.mq.edu.au
Mathematics Department                             office: E7A-419
Macquarie University                               tel: +61 +2 9850 8955
Sydney, Australia                                  fax: +61 +2 9850 8114
------------------------------------------------------------------------

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