[XeTeX] again russian, german, english...

[Jonathan Kew]

On 16 Feb 2006, at 6:15 am, Martin Henning wrote:

>>
>> I see the bad art-icle in your PDF, but when I re-run the sample  
>> here, I get "arti-cle" instead! Very odd. Apparently something  
>> about my configuration is different from yours. Could I see your  
>> language.dat file (as located by "kpsewhich language.dat") to see  
>> if I can reproduce the problem you're having?
>
> unfortunately our command doesn't work for me? maybe i should have  
> done it differently? i did it on the console, even as root.  
> "Command not found."

As root, kpsewhich might not be found because root won't necessarily  
have the same PATH settings as your normal user. The PATH  
modifications that i-Installer does don't apply to the root account.

With your usual user name, it should work, unless you deselected "CLI  
[command-line interface] Activation" when installing the TeX i- 
Package, I believe. (Does latex work from the command line in  
Terminal? If so, then kpsewhich should also work--if it doesn't, then  
something is broken.)

> used locate, though, and i have about 5 language.dat files - which  
> one do you need?
>
> /opt/local/var/db/dports/sources/ 
> rsync.rsync.opendarwin.org_dpupdate_dports/print/teTeX/files/patch- 
> language.dat
> /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.gwtex/tex/generic/config/language.dat
> /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/tex/generic/config/language.dat
> /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.tetex/tex/generic/config/language.dat
> /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.tetex/tex/lambda/config/language.dat
> /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.tetex/tex/platex/config/language.dat

The one from /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local.... is what xetex  
will have used when building the xelatex format. Could you send me a  
copy of this, so I can try to reproduce your environment and see  
where that strange hyphenation is coming from?

>
> i looked into every one of them, and in none of them the english  
> stuff seems to be disabled - at least not the american part. does  
> it mean, that americans behave so strange and i should rather  
> uncomment the british version?! :))

I tried both British and American variants, and neither of them  
hyphenated as "art-icle" for me; that's why I'm currently puzzled.
>
>  now i am tempted to try different fonts it seems to me (sorry),  
> but charis sil is quit "heavy" so to speak. maybe i can find one  
> that comes closer to the lightweight appearance of THE standard,  
> original font.

True, Charis is quite a "solid" face, not necessarily matching  
everyone's taste. But then, everyone has different tastes--plenty of  
people don't much like Computer Modern, either!

If you need English, German, and Russian, but not "exotic" extended- 
Latin letters or strange combinations of diacritics, then many  
TrueType/OpenType Unicode fonts should work, provided they cover both  
Latin and Cyrillic. (You could even try Times Roman--not a CM-like  
look, but at least it'd be very "conventional".)

> oh don't tell me there is a \makefontlighter{2342} option :D

No, you're obviously confused... the parameter should be 0x4232. :)

JK