[XeTeX] using Didot.dfont in Linux

[Jonathan Kew]

On 4 Jul 2006, at 9:31 pm, Pablo Rodríguez wrote:

> Using fondu (http://fondu.sourceforge.net/) I have extracted the ttf
> fonts contained in Didot.dfont (from a MacOS X computer). If I use it
> with XeTeX for Linux, they work fine, but xdvipdfmx complains:
>
> ** WARNING ** Unable to read TrueType Unicode cmap table.
> ** WARNING ** Failed to load ToUnicode CMap for font "Didot"
> ** WARNING ** Unable to read TrueType Unicode cmap table.
> ** WARNING ** Failed to load ToUnicode CMap for font "Didot-Italic"
>
> It seems that the Didot ttf fonts cmap table with Mac Unicode  
> enconding
> (I was told). And I don't know whether xdvipdfmx can handle this or it
> requires a Windows encoding.

The short answer is that you can't do that... for both legal and  
technical reasons.

I think many of the fonts that Apple ships are specifically designed  
to work on Mac OS X and omit tables that are required on other  
platforms, to discourage people from copying them to other machines.  
I also suspect that the Mac OS X license (or the font vendor's  
license under which the font is provided to Apple) is unlikely to  
allow this.

> And I don't know whether due to this, XeTeX for Linux seems not to be
> able to apply the liga and smcp tags.

I don't believe the fonts included with OS X have such OpenType  
layout features at all. They use AAT for such features, which is a  
separate technology, supported by XeTeX only on Mac OS X (as that's  
the only place such fonts are usually found, and the support is  
provided through Apple's ATSUI system).

An OpenType Didot would be a separate product, not the font Apple  
bundles with Mac OS X.

JK