[XeTeX] Re: XeTeX & Unicode vs. standard LaTeX

[Jonathan Kew]

On 11 Oct 2004, at 4:53 pm, Jon Breitenbucher wrote:

> How will this allow one to handle things like swash small caps or 
> italic small caps?
>
> Right now I am defining my own shapes in the fd files for italic small 
> caps (is), swash small caps (ss), and slanted small caps (ls). I've 
> been trying to put together fd files for the more popular and useful 
> fonts in the Adobe Type Classics collection, and just sent most of 
> what I have to Will. So I'm curious as to how this will fit with that 
> work?
>

For richer font families, you'll probably still want to write custom 
.fd files; this is intended to provide a minimal-effort way for naive 
users to be able to make use of the basic styles of whatever fonts they 
may have installed, but if you want more typographic sophistication 
you'll still need to do more setup work.

Actually, the \NewOSXFontFamily macro I've written as a starting point 
does check to see if the given font has either an OpenType or AAT small 
caps feature available, and if so, it defines the sc shape in addition 
to bold and italic. You could extend it to look for additional options 
in the same way; it's largely a question of (a) deciding which options 
are widespread enough to be worth trying to automate, and (b) settling 
the family/shape naming questions.

JK

(I'm hoping to get the new release out tomorrow, btw, so you folks can 
actually try this! Been struggling with some machine issues here 
today...)