[XeTeX] Devanagari ligature issue

[camatkara]

Jonathan,

Thanks for the quick reply!  I was just missing the script option (I'm 
using xelatex with fontspec).  Thanks again for posting your helpful 
reply so quickly.

best,
Guy

Jonathan Kew wrote:
> On 5 Dec 2007, at 9:14 pm, Guy wrote:
>
>   
>> Greetings all,
>>
>> I've just begun to use XeTeX on linux (ubuntu, via TeXLive) and
>> haven't been able to get Devanagari to appear correctly.  The output
>> essentially undoes the ligatures formed by my input method editor
>> (scim / m17n), leaving a mess of viraama-s and mis-sequenced short
>> 'i'-s.
>>     
>
> Well, strictly speaking they're not "ligatures formed by the input  
> method editor". The IME just generates the Unicode character  
> sequences; the ligatures (and reordered short-i, etc) are done by the  
> rendering engine in conjunction with the OpenType tables in the font.
>
>   
>> (I've tried several unicode fonts which work well with other
>> unicode-specific programs (Sanskrit 2003, Uttara, Santipur OT), as
>> well as different unicode-capable editors, but all yield the same
>> problem.  Is there anything specific to naagari typesetting which
>> needs to be specified in the preamble?  Any help would be much
>> appreciated.
>>     
>
> If you're using xelatex, with the fontspec package to specify fonts,  
> you need the [Script=Devanagari] option, e.g,
>
>    \usepackage{fontspec}
>    \setmainfont[Script=Devanagari]{Sanskrit 2003}
>
> (or when using \newfontfamily or other fontspec commands).
>
> If you're using "plain" xetex, give the "script=deva" option in the  
> \font declaration:
>
>    \font\dev="Sanskrit 2003:script=deva" at 12pt
>    \dev नमस्ते!
>
> In either case, this is needed to select the Devanagari shaping  
> engine for use with this font; without it, the appropriate OpenType  
> features won't be applied.
>
> JK
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> XeTeX mailing list
> postmaster at tug.org
> http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex
>