[XeTeX] accessing fonts from TeX tree and glyphs without Unicode slot

[Adam Twardoch]

Will Robertson wrote:
 > As I recall you were complaining how it just doesn't make sense to 
 > have system-installed fonts when your collection has grown to many 
 > thousands. Unfortunately, most of us aren't in that situation :)

That's not the only case. Another case is when you try to use fonts that 
have nominally the same internal font names but are located in different 
locations. At BachoTeX, Karel Píška showed his way of comparing various 
versions of related fonts 
(http://www.gust.org.pl/BachoTeX/2006/abstracts/26en.html). Such 
approach would be quite useful for font production and development, and 
the ability to mix several versions of nominally the same font would be 
great.

 > I prefer the idea of Jonathan's to have an extended syntax to access 
 > fonts, something along the lines of
 >    \XeTeXfont\caslonsc = "ACaslonPro-Regular" path "D:\fontslib\Adobe
 > \" features "+smcp" at 16pt

That does make sense. Actually, this would be the only reasonable 
solution for .ttc fonts since they can contain several fonts identified 
by different menu names, all in one file.

Jonathan writes:

 > At the moment, I'm inclined to keep the current situation, where in 
 > principle you can take a Plain TeX or standard LaTeX document, run
 > it  with XeTeX, and get the same output

I definitely support that view. The TeX community tends to be rather 
conservative when it comes to their existing documents. XeTeX should 
attempt to maintain backwards compatibility at least within reasonable 
boundaries, to make people's transition from older TeX systems into 
XeTeX easier.

A.

-- 

Adam Twardoch
http://www.twardoch.com/