[XeTeX] fontspec v1.7

[Ross Moore]

Hi Peter,

On 27/06/2005, at 7:19 AM, Peter Dyballa wrote:

>
> Am 23.06.2005 um 13:16 schrieb Ross Moore:
>
>
>> For example, search for instances of  sin x  (as from  $\sin x$ ).
>>
>> Clearly the user enters plain text into the search-text box;
>> but the engine must be smart enough to match  \char"D835\char"D...
>> forms as above.
>>
>
> Hello Ross!
>
> Do you know cmap.sty (ftp://ftp.dante.de/tex-archive/macros/latex/ 
> contrib/cmap/)? Couldn't this cure the problem with not being able  
> to find math encoded strings?

That's certainly an interesting package that I'd not known about.
It allows the Unicode code-point to be associated with font-characters
that appear within the PDF, with arbitrarily encoded fonts; so yes,
it would be useful with legacy encodings.
It does this by providing a Resource of type CMap associated
with the particular font-encoding.

For the non-XeTeX world, this would be extremely useful.

However, with XeTeX, the aim ought to be to put the correct Unicode
code-points directly into the character stream, so that a CMap resource
would be quite redundant.


It does raise some interesting points though.
e.g.
For a math-bold letter 'a' the CMap for its font
ought to have an association:

                  <61>  <D835DC82>

But is the PDF world ready for this yet ?


Alternatively, if XeTeX were to insert  \char"D835\char"DC82
for this math-bold 'a', then maybe the reverse association
should be included:
                  <D835DC82>  <61>

Would this make the math-character findable as if an ordinary 'a' ?



What about greek, used as math-symbols ?
Would the following CMap association:

    <03B1>  <005C0061006C007000680061>

allow an 'alpha' glyph to be found by searching for  '\alpha' ?

Or maybe we are using an italic alpha directly:

    <D835DEFC>  <005C0061006C007000680061>



Has anybody played with this kind of thing ?
Or know of anyone who has ?


Cheers,

     Ross



>
> --
> Greetings
>
>   Pete
>
> Time flies like an error
> but fruitflies like a banana
>
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ross Moore                                         ross at maths.mq.edu.au
Mathematics Department                             office: E7A-419
Macquarie University                               tel: +61 +2 9850 8955
Sydney, Australia  2109                            fax: +61 +2 9850 8114
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