[XeTeX] Fonts for (Xe)TeX use

[Mojca Miklavec]

On 8/31/06, Wendy McKay wrote:
> Hi Taco,
>
> On Wed, 30 Aug 2006, Taco Hoekwater wrote:
> > Hi Wendy,
> >
> > Wendy McKay wrote:
> > >
> > > Are there any wiki experts on this list who could help with maintaining
> > > information about fonts both for LaTeX and XeTeX?
> >
> > Right after (actually during) BachoTeK this year we registered
> > the domain / website
> >
> >       http://www.openfontgarden.net
> >
> > precisely with this goal in mind. It runs on a Dante-funded machine
> > (Patrick Gundlach is in charge) so we can pretty much do whatever we
> > please when it comes to installation of software.
> >
> > Unfortunately, uintil now all of us have been too busy to actually
> > add content, but there is a mediawiki installed already. If someone
> > could find the time to add this list that would be great.
> >
> > Greetings,
> > Taco
> >
>
> Excellent news! A Wiki website for open type fonts.
> I have limited experience using some wikis, but  mediawiki is not one of
> them. However, I understand that there are converters that will take
> html text and generate mediawiki code. This may make things easier for
> novices who want to help but don't have time to learn mediawiki talk.

You don't have much to learn. Mediawiki is created to enable people
with *NO* html knowledge to edit the pages, so that should be no
excuse. If you don't know how to create something and if you see
something similar to what you would like to create, just click the
"edit" button and try to mimic the original. (There are also help
pages of course.)

Converters from the mentioned page wouldn't be of much help. If one
would decide to "clone" the content (ie. to start with approximately
the same set of fonts), the following would be needed:
- someone to collect all those fonts (I can put them on the "garden" then)
- LaTeX might need to be installed on the "garden" (at the moment only
ConTeXt is supported, but LaTeX currently has more extensive support
for those font) or someone should write equivalent support for those
fonts for ConTeXt (less probable, but not impossible)

> If an experimental page can be created to get started, then maybe some
> real XeTeX/wiki users might be inspired to step forward
> and improve things and provide sample texts of the list of fonts
> that Bruno has collected.  Thanks Bruno.

You can browse through http://wiki.contextgarden.net to get the
impression. You can use sandbox.contextgarden.net to experiment. It's
the same server and "experimental page" openfontgarden is already
there as well.

> As Joachim Trinkwitz, mentioned, Palle Jorgensen's LaTeX Font Catalogue at
> <http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/> is a nice starting point to mimick.
> The catalogue  requires lots of images for the font samples I think.

(could be automated)

> Help would be needed from XeTeX users who have the fonts installed
> to produce samples.

This is exactly something that is *NOT* needed.

See one of the unfinished pages like
    http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Latin_Modern
and click on "edit" to see how they were created (no images!!!).

Unfortunately I just broke the functionality of "live ConTeXt"
yesterday (so you can't play with it at the moment), but hopefully you
can get the idea.

For the font licences which allow that, it should be possible to
install fonts on the server and then generate sample pages
automatically using templates (using either pdfTeX or XeTeX).

Is XeTeX going to be part of TeX Live 2006? I someone would manage to
install XeTeX on the server (I'm too inexperienced and Patrick is too
busy), there should be no reason for not using it to create "live"
samples on openfontgarden.net.


Wiki needs entusiasts in the field, not really experienced programmers
or hackers.

Mojca