[XeTeX] XeTex and Tibetan full justification

[Daniel Muller]

Jonathan,

Thanks for the example, the second macro of \line{} gives the proper results, except that the fill
should occur only with a shad+space like "some Tibetan text| |other text", "some text| text" or
"some text ga |text", but not in "some text|| ||".

I would like to undestand how the macro works and modify according to the rules above:

% version of \line that pads with space after \shad, or with \tsheg on the right if no \shad
present
\catcode\shad=\active
\def^^^^0f0d{\advance\shadfound by 1 \shad\hskip1sp plus 1fil}
\newcount\shadfound
\def\line#1{\shadfound=0
  \hbox to \hsize{#1\ifnum\shadfound=0 \unskip\leaders\hbox{\tsheg\kern.05em}\hfil
  \else \skip0=\lastskip \unskip \ifdim\skip0=1sp \advance\shadfound by -1 \fi
    \ifnum \shadfound=0 \hfill \fi \fi}}

Where can I find a good reference on the web how to program in LaTex?

For sure I will replace it with \tibetanline{} macro.

I'm wondering about one little things, my text is about 573 pages or 12000 lines, is it efficent
to use a macro in that case or should we implement that Tibetan justification differently?

Daniel
--



--- Jonathan Kew <jonathan_kew at sil.org> wrote:
> On 18 Apr 2005, at 9:27 pm, Daniel Muller wrote:
> 
> > First, thanks to all persons who help me with Tibetan fonts and XeTex.
> >
> > XenoType has just released a new Tibetan for Mac OS X supporting more 
> > Sanskrit stacked letters.
> > With that version I get the proper results.
> >
> > Now, I'm wondering how to implement a Tibetan full justification with 
> > XeTex. Tibetan uses tsheg at
> > the end of the line to justify on the right, or if any shad (|) is in 
> > the line blanks are used to
> > justify on the right, in some cases (no shad in the line) spaces are 
> > added after the end of a
> > syllable ending with /ga/.
> >
> > Is it possible to change the behavior of \line{... Tibetan text ...} 
> > or to add a new kind of full
> > justification according to Tibetan rules? How easy to measure the 
> > width of some text?
> >
> 
> I'm not sure of the precise rules you'd want to implement, but here are 
> a few examples of hacking at \line and the Tibetan characters (note 
> that you can make things like tsheg or shad into \active characters, 
> and then get them to do special things that will affect justification).
> 
> Note that it might not really be a good idea to redefine \line{} itself 
> like this, as other macros may use it in ways you don't expect; might 
> be safer to have a custom \tibetanline{} macro. But it depends on your 
> particular application.
> 
> Hope this helps give some ideas of what you could do.
> 
> JK

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