[XeTeX] Syriac Script

[Malte Rosenau]

<xetex at tug.org> schrieb am 18.10.05 14:56:51:

> > Is this a result of OS X's incomplete support for syriac? Any  
> > chance to make this work in XeTeX?
> 
> It's not a result of OS X's incomplete support, but ICU Layout's  
> complete lack of Syriac shaping support. The Meltho fonts rely on  
> OpenType rather that AAT layout technology, so XeTeX would use them  
> via the ICU layout library -- but it doesn't know about Syriac, and  
> so they won't work.
> 
> See "Submitting ICU Bugs and Feature Requests" at http:// 
> icu.sourceforge.net/bugs.html to file bug reports for the ICU  
> library. If Syriac gets added to ICU, then XeTeX will have support  
> for it.
> 
> (Of course, if someone actually contributes the code, rather than  
> merely requesting an enhancement, that's better still.)

Ahhhh, that makes perfect sense. Unfortunately, I know virtually nothing 
about C/C++...

> The other way to get Syriac to work in XeTeX would be via an AAT  
> Syriac font -- but I'm not aware of any that are available. A  
> knowledgeable developer would be able to add AAT tables to the Meltho  
> fonts, I guess, but there are not many skilled AAT font table  
> programmers around.

Would this work out of the box with XeTeX if those AAT tables were available? 
FontForge has some limited support for AAT, maybe I can convert one of the 
Melto fonts  (it's an TTF flavoured OTF, but I doubt that it will convert the 
contextual stuff automatically) and add those tables myself...  I really don't 
want to write my phd with Mellel (which is a fine piece of software, but not 
suitable for publishing), so I have to solve this problem one way or another.

thx, 

Malte
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