[XeTeX] Microtypography?

[Geoffrey Alan Washburn]

Jonathan Kew wrote:
> On 24 Apr 2006, at 4:31 pm, Geoffrey Alan Washburn wrote:
> 
>> 	Are there any plans to implement something like pdfTeX's
>> microtypographic features in some future release of XeTeX?  Thanks.
> 
> I think I failed to reply to this, being otherwise occupied at the  
> time....

	No problem.

> It's certainly something that would be interesting to explore, but  
> would be a significant amount of work... I don't think pdfTeX's  
> implementation would mesh easily with XeTeX's world of Unicode, the  
> character/glyph rendering model, OpenType "smart fonts", etc.

	I think protrusion might not be too difficult, but support for 
expansion/shrinking of glyphs could be quite complex depending upon the 
rendering API you have available.  I can't really comment, not knowing 
all that much about the internals of either.  I have actually been 
thinking some about developing a new outline font format that would 
provide hooks for doing these and other things in a much more 
programmatic fashion, but that is probably not going to happen until my 
dissertation is complete.

	The main reason I asked is I'm left with the dilemma of whether my 
dissertation will look better using OpenType MinionPro Opticals 
converted to Type 1 and rendered with pdfTeX and its microtypographic 
support or whether it would look better using XeTeX without 
microtypographic features, because I won't have to jump through hoops to 
deal with the limitations of 255 glyphs per font, etc.


> So, "in some future release"? Yes, perhaps. Concrete plans or  
> timescale at this point? No, sorry.

	Sure, no problem.  I think projects like the Linux port are probably 
much more useful in the near term anyway.  Thanks!