[XeTeX] Old Persian (Getting slightly off topic \ldots)

[Jonathan Kew]

On 30 Aug 2004, at 10:17 am, Robert Voogdgeert wrote:

>
> Op 29-aug-04 om 19:59 heeft Jonathan Kew het volgende geschreven:
>
>> \font\ezra="Ezra SIL:script=hebr" at 14pt .......
>>
>> (Without the "script=hebr" specification, I'm not sure if the right 
>> OpenType features will be applied.)
>
> Jonathan,
>
> You were right about the `script=hebr' specification. Without it, the 
> vowel marks as well as the cantillation marks are not posited well. 
> Strange thing is though, that the word wrapping is l2r rather than 
> r2l. Can this be set right with a further specification?
>

You need \beginR ... \endR around right-to-left text (this is the 
normal e-TeX/TeX--XeT way to set directionality). And to enable the 
direction commands, you'll need to set \TeXXeTstate=1 at the beginning 
of your document, otherwise you'll get "! Improper \beginR" or 
something like that.

For overall R-L paragraphs, start them with \beginR and don't put \endR 
before the end of the paragraph; so for purely R-L text, I often do 
something like:

	\everypar={% at the start of each paragraph, do....
		\setbox0=\lastbox % save the paragraph indent, if any
		\beginR % set R-L direction
		\box0 % then re-insert the indent
	}

(Not sure how this would interact with LaTeX environments, etc; I tend 
to work with Plain TeX as a starting point. But it shows the general 
idea, anyway.)

JK