[XeTeX] wrong font match and missing characters

Pablo Rodríguez oinos at web.de
Sat Jun 10 01:39:03 CEST 2006


Jonathan Kew wrote:
>> Pablo Rodríguez <oinos at web.de> writes:
>>
>>> Although it worked fine with version 0.992, now the roman version is
>>> replaced with the bold one and Greek glyphs seem to be missing  
>>> from the font (log file attached).
> 
> I've tried GFS Didot (both the .otf and .ttf releases -- which are  
> you using?) on my SuSE 10 system, and so far I haven't seen this  
> problem; I get the expected faces, and the Greek characters appear  
> fine. But I suspect there's a certain element of (unwanted)  
> randomness going on here, especially as Ralf reports different  
> results with the two versions of the family name.

I used .ttf versions generated by me from the .otf releases, since the
original .ttf versions are broken.

I would use the .otf version, but they contain the seac operator in
composite characters and is deprecated for OpenType. So I generated the
.otf fonts with FontForge (http://fontforge.sf.net).

The seac operator for OpenType fonts is not implemented by (x)dvipdfmx
and the program cannot handle it (yet). xdvipdfmx works fine with my
homemade versions.

> Pablo, what Linux distro are you using, and did you install a binary  
> xetex package (if available for your system), or compile from source?

I use Mandriva with fontconfig-2.3.95 and freetype-2.1.10. I have
compiled xetex from source.

I don't know whehter you are already aware of this, Jonathan, but I
experience something really weird. OpenType fonts are embedded fine
(only once and the text can be fully copied), but TrueType fonts are not
(they are embedded many times and their text cannot be copied always). I
use my PhD dissertation (a 350 pages book) to experiment with XeLaTeX.

I don't know how font handling in GNU/Linux works (I don't have the
faintiest idea about how it works on my distribution), but for some
strange reason I got TrueType embedded text (only once and it can be
copied fully).

Mandriva comes with a tool for installing TrueType fonts that also
converts them into Type 1. Removing the .afm and .pfb files of the
installed TrueType fonts made that xdvipdfmx embedded the fonts in the
proper way. But after restarting the computer, fonts are embedded many
times in the same document (and there are other TrueType fonts with no
Type 1 version that weren't embedded only once from the start [there
were no .afm or .pfb files to be removed]).

This is what looks strange from my point of view. It seems as if xetex
and xdvipdfmx (but mainly xetex) is not handling the TrueType fonts
directly (and I don't mean the TFM files). But I don't know how XeTeX works.

Just in case it helps,


Pablo



PS: I won't be able to connect to the internet until Monday or Tuesday
(any reply will have to be made after that).


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