[XeTeX] XeTeX 0.8 available -- now with OpenType support :-)

Somadevah at aol.com Somadevah at aol.com
Wed Jun 2 21:31:00 CEST 2004


In a message dated 2/6/04 11:40:29 am, jonathan_kew at sil.org writes:


> This means that you'd have to do extra work at the TeX macro level if
> you want to try and "compose" accented characters for which the font
> does not really have support. Of course, if you obtain or create a
> suitable .tfm file, you can use the font in "TFM mode" instead of
> directly as a Unicode font, and get accents to work nicely; but then
> you lose access to the extended Unicode character set, optional font
> features, etc. One way or another, it's a trade-off! The real answer is
> for font developers/vendors to support a more complete Unicode
> character repertoire.
> 
Dear Jonathan,

I have sent off an email to Adobe asking for them to at least consider adding 
the combining diacritics to their OT fonts. I am not holding my breath. I 
even thought of adding them myself, but I suspect this might not be permitted by 
Adobe's licensing policy? Also, I fear there would be unforeseen complications 
with the OT tables that i would not know how to solve. 

I doubt anyone else will be greatly interested but I got my Indic underdots 
to work by using an old macro (not by me) called "diatop". Here is the code 
(the value of \raise.175em is may need adjusting for other fonts, or for heavy 
bold etc.):

\def\diatop[#1|#2]{{\leavevmode\setbox1=\hbox{{#1{}}}\setbox2=\hbox{{#2{}}}%
     \dimen0=\ifdim\wd1>\wd2\wd1\else\wd2\fi%
     \dimen1=\ht2\advance\dimen1by-1ex%
     \setbox1=\hbox to1\dimen0{\hss#1\hss}%
     \rlap{\raise1\dimen1\box1}%
     \hbox to1\dimen0{\hss#2\hss}}}
%
\def\d#1{\smash{\diatop[\raise.175em\hbox{.}|#1]}}
%
%
\font\body="Adobe Garamond Pro" at 11pt\body

Here are some underdot characters used in transliteration from Indic scripts: 
\d{r}, \d{d}, \d{t}, \d{s}, \d{m} etc.   

\bye

Somadeva
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