[XeTeX] Syriac Script

[Jonathan Kew]

On 18 Oct 2005, at 1:51 pm, Will Robertson wrote:
> Anyway, you should be able to get by with turning the contextual  
> ligatures on manually:
>
>   \fontspec[Script=Syriac, Ligatures=Contextual]{Estrangelo Edessa}
>   ???

I'm afraid that's not going to work, because Syriac shaping depends  
on assigning different feature tags to letters depending on their  
position in the word (initial, medial, final, and some additional  
features). It's not enough to simply turn on a feature (or any fixed  
set of features) for the entire text run.

So a true Syriac shaping engine, similar to the Arabic one but with a  
few distinct features of its own, really is needed.

JK