[XeTeX] on fontspec 1.10

[Ralf Stubner]

Will Robertson <wspr81 at gmail.com> writes:

> I suppose I should have forseen this complaint.
> Before I address it, I would like to ask if anyone minds that  
> fontspec features are accessed with mixed case keyval syntax. It's  
> come up previously that all other LaTeX packages would use  
> [letters=smallcaps], so fontspec's a little in the wrong, but I've  
> been a bit loathe to change it and make things even more confusing  
> (in the short term).

You have some rather long keys and values in fontspec. These are build
from several word and would get difficult to read if set in in all lower
case. 

> Now, back to the problem. Since [Letters=SmallCaps] is only defined  
> for the upright shape, to avoid warnings for the other shapes you  
> should activate this feature for the upright shape only:
>
> \newfontinstance\spacedsc[
>    LetterSpace=5.0,
>    UprightFeatures={
>      Letters={SmallCaps,UppercaseSmallCaps}}
>                           ]{FPL Neu}
>
> (untested...note that you shouldn't need to escape endofline chars in  
> keyval syntax unless I've made a bit of a mistake -- which certainly  
> has happened in the past!)

Works very well. Thank you. Concerning escaping the EOL chars: Since I
can never remember when this is actually necessary, I just put them in
everywhere where they /might/ be necessary. ;-)

> I do realise this syntax is a bit ugly...any suggestions for  
> improvements?

I don't think it is particularly ugly. One is asking for quite
complicated things here after all. I do like Jonathan's \newfontinstance
vs \newfontfamily splitting, though. The problem is, of course,
backwards compatibility.

> Out of curiosity, how are you developing your font?
> I'd have loved to have learned MetaType1 and tried my own, but time  
> is too short when you've got a PhD to try to do. Hopefully for the  
> future.

Currently I am using FontForge, which allows me to separate the
'creative' part when fiddling with the outlines and the boring technical
when producing the fonts. But that is, of course, a matter of taste.

cheerio
ralf