[XeTeX] \font syntax

[Bruno Voisin]

Le 31 juil. 07 à 17:24, Taco Hoekwater a écrit :

> Hans and I would be very pleased with a slightly different syntax
>
>    \XeTeXfont \serp =
>         name "Serpentine"        % and/or file "sspt____"
>         renderer "ICU"  at 12pt  % all k/v in arbitrary order
>         \relax                   % \relax terminates scanning
>
> Because that way, the luatex executable could have a primitive
> \luatexfont that converts the whole spec blindly into a lua table
> (dictionary) for script processing.

FWIW given I'm no programmer and couldn't contribute a single line of  
code, the following is just from a user perspective:

- The above sounds very nice. In particular, it would allow making  
fontname and "fontname" equivalent, as is usual practice in (pdf)TeX  
as pointed out by Hans, with "fontname" allowing spaces in font (and  
file) names.

- Compared with the syntax of other primitive or plain TeX commands,  
it could not find any other example of mandatory \relax for ending up  
a command argument. I'm not sure what the "standard" TeX practice  
would be in such a case. Maybe

    \XeTeXfont \serp = {          % opening brace starts font  
specification
         name "Serpentine"        % and/or file "sspt____"
         renderer "ICU"  at 12pt  % all k/v in arbitrary order
         }                        % closing brace ends font  
specification

This is remotely similar to the syntax of \everypar, for example. But  
it doesn't feel as elegant as the syntax of usual primitive or plain  
TeX commands, though.

Bruno Voisin