[XeTeX] XeLaTeX font selection
Will Robertson
will at guerilla.net.au
Sun Oct 10 11:03:49 CEST 2004
On 9 Oct 2004, at 5:13 PM, Bruno Voisin wrote:
> <snip>
Having said what you have, it's still necessary to say that ones of the
reasons XeTeX is better than TeX is the simple font stuff - no more
messing with tfm or map files! But then when you say "Oh, and to use
these fonts in LaTeX you need:" and insert a 20 line block of
\DeclareFontShape commands, LaTeX users can be a little overwhelmed.
I think the defining point is that LaTeX run with XeTeX *cannot* use
the myriad of fonts people are used to (with \usepackage{palatino},
etc.) including the Base 35 postscript fonts - so an alternative
definitely needs to be implemented.
(I have defined a new encoding called OSX, so all these new XeTeX font
selections can only be used if \usepackage[OSX]{fontenc} is used. But
the NFSS is being used as is.)
> Similarly, regarding the font selection I think it would be better to
> avoid defining too many new commands like \cfseries and \textcf, when
> this can be avoided. For different variants of "bold", like semi-bold,
> bold, bold extended, heavy, black, extra-black, ultra-black, I would
> advocate using package options, like you did, for selecting one
> variant as corresponding to the standard \bfseries and \textbf, once
> and for good in a given document; just because people hear about
> \textbf in the various LaTeX manuals around, and I'm afraid they will
> become suspicious and uncomfortable when seeing commands like \textcf.
That's a very good suggestion!
I like it a lot. Just define everything low-level and let people use it
as they themselves see fit. At least for now.
> On the other hand, for truly new combinations like bold italic, I also
> do define at time a new command myself, like \textbi instead of
> \textbf{\textit.
>
> All this may make no sense, I'm not a font specialist. I don't care
> myself about differences between bold and bold extended, for example,
> but I imagine typographers might perhaps want to use both in a given
> document. If so, then please forget the above. And in any case it's
> probably unwise for me to suggest things, given I won't have time to
> contribute to the work itself.
No, I think what you've said is very pertinent and my thinking has been
changed about what needs to be done.
> Perhaps a detailed inspection of the different packages available for
> font selection in LaTeX (PSNFSS, PSNFSSX, eco, many more) could give
> us hints on how the core LaTeX people have dealty with this problem.
> It's not I'm all for standards: we're all using Macs, for example, not
> Windows boxes (not to say I wouldn't be pleased at seeing Macs
> becoming the standard, which I hope to see one day ;-)
The stuff in Philip Lehman's fontinstallationguide.pdf is basically
providing all the info I am using to extend that which I need (robust
methods for selecting lower case numbers, for example).
Thanks,
Will Robertson
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