[XeTeX] Making a .fmt file using XeTeX

[Stephen Moye]

On Saturday, February 19, 2005, at 01:44PM, Jonathan Kew <jonathan_kew at sil.org> wrote:

>On 19 Feb 2005, at 4:57 pm, Stephen Moye wrote:
>
>> I have solved all of the problems so far, but I have a new one.
>>
>> Some of the documents have an 'i' with a dieresis: ï
>>
>> If I create a simple document:
>>
>> %&program=xetex
>>
>> \font\rm="Hoefler Text" at 10pt
>>
>> \rm
>>
>> Anaïs Nin Altinaï
>>
>> \bye
>>
>> the characters print correctly.
>>
>> I have created a .xfmt file and when I use that the characters are 
>> missing in the PDF although they are present in the TeX file. What is 
>> the difference? Should the .tex file that serves as the basis for the 
>> .xfmt file have something like %&encoding=utf-8 at the head of the 
>> file?
>
>No, but you may need one in your .tex document that contains the ï.
>
>%&encoding=.... is an indication to TeXShop as to what encoding it 
>should use to save (or load) the document (overriding the default 
>specified in Preferences). If you save a file with characters such as ï 
>using MacRoman encoding, they won't be read properly by XeTeX because 
>it expects all input to be Unicode.

Well, that is the interesting thing -- I did have %&encoding=utf-8 at the top of the file and it didn't seem to do anything. I took the extra step in TeXShop of a 'Save As' making sure that the encoding was utf-8. Still no luck.

In desperation I opened the file being TeXed in BBEdit and selected Unicode, utf-8 and 'include byte-order mark' (that last may not have been necessary) and did a "Save As". Finally the document TeXed correctly in TeXShop and I had my ï.

What a day. Thanks for your assistance.

Cheers.

Stephen Moye