[XeTeX] Newbie Qs: Font Types, Names, IPA

Jonathan Kew jonathan_kew at sil.org
Tue Nov 2 12:17:53 CET 2004


Hello Alex,

Sorry not to respond sooner; I just returned from a few days away and 
am catching up on things.

> With some files (including some of the samples) XeTeX will complain 
> that:
> "<font description> not loadable: ATSUI font not found."
> even when the font name seems ok.

Some of the example files use fonts that aren't standard installs with 
OS X. I tried to include comments at the top where this is the case, 
but may have missed some, sorry.

> For instance, it says that if I try to use Euler, which is a .dfont 
> file. Does this have to do with the name or the type of font?

Most likely, XeTeX is seeing a different name than you're giving.... 
read on....

> Would it be possible to generate a list of the names of fonts XeTeX 
> has access to?

A good first approximation is to look at your available fonts with 
FontBook. Anything FontBook shows as installed should be available to 
XeTeX. The name to use is what FontBook calls the "Display Name" (shown 
below the sample text pane when you click on a font).

(This applies to fonts installed in the regular Mac way; legacy TeX 
fonts with .tfm files are another matter, as the OS knows nothing about 
those. For those, you use the .tfm name, as always.)

If you want a listing as a file, I think you could generate one with 
the 'ftxinstalledfonts' tool in Apple's Font Tools package 
<http://developer.apple.com/fonts/OSXTools.html>.

> I see that other people are interested in IPA transcription but I'd 
> like a bit more info. Are there other Unicode IPA fonts that we can 
> use besides Doulos SIL? The main thing for me is that I would like to 
> have my IPA transcriptions italicized.

You could look at Gentium <http://scripts.sil.org/Gentium>, which has 
both Regular and Italic faces. I believe it includes all or almost all 
the phonetic symbols. However, Gentium does not currently have AAT or 
OpenType tables, and therefore diacritics won't stack, etc. This may or 
may not be a crippling problem, depending on the kind of IPA data 
you're dealing with.

Major font vendors may also have OpenType fonts that provide the 
characters you need; I'm not sure what the Unicode IPA coverage of 
products from Adobe, AgfaMonotype, Linotype, etc. is like, but it 
doesn't hurt to ask.

> BTW, not sure if this is useful to any of you but I've been using the 
> IPAKeys keyboard.
> http://www.floodlight.net/MacOSX/IPAKeys.shtml

Yes, that's a good option.

There are also other Unicode keyboard layouts, including another IPA 
layout (and resources to help create your own) referenced at 
<http://scripts.sil.org/InputResources>.

HTH,

Jonathan



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