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

[Will Robertson]

On 04/05/2006, at 23:50 , Jonathan Kew wrote:

>> Alternatively, it doesn't seem unreasonable to distribute Gentium or
>> something with XeTeX and pre-load that font in the format instead of
>> the archaic CM...
>
> The question here is whether the xetex and xelatex formats should try
> to behave exactly like standard Plain TeX and LaTeX by default, until
> the user specifically starts adding/changing things in the document.
>
> At the moment, I'm inclined to keep the current situation...

Yes, that's probably sensible. Not sure if that statement precludes  
OpenType LM, though :) I would be inclined to suggest that the  
differences are minimal enough to be worth ignoring, but there might  
be other ramifications I haven't thought about.

Anyway, I went into this topic under the assumption of using a  
package to load this stuff, and only later broadened by view to  
consider changing the format. Going back to that original idea, it  
doesn't seem so bad.

How about, instead of specifying paths (or maybe as well as), XeTeX  
font search paths could be specified that don't hard code a font's  
position on a users HD, but rather just allow a font that's not "in  
the system" to be accessed...

Will