[XeTeX] Problem with oldstyle figures

[James Crippen]

On Dec 29, 2007 12:41 AM, Jonathan Kew <jonathan_kew at sil.org> wrote:
> On 29 Dec 2007, at 3:28 am, James Crippen wrote:
>
> > I'm using some updated Adobe fonts and can't get the +onum feature to
> > work, whether done in raw XeTeX, or using Fontspec in XeLaTeX. In the
> > past I got oldstyle figures with any of +smcp, +c2sc, or +onum using
> > various Adobe fonts. With these new versions of their fonts I only get
> > them using +c2sc, and never with +onum.
> >
> > The fonts in particular that I've tested include Adobe Garamond Pro,
> > Minion Pro, and Warnock Pro. Older versions of these worked fine, but
> > I upgraded them yesterday and they broke with XeTeX.
> >
> > The fonts all work as expected in applications like TextEdit, Pages,
> > etc. Poking around inside them seems to show that the +onum feature
> > should be working. They're only broken in XeTeX.
>
> It sounds like something has changed about the construction of the
> OpenType tables, and the layout library used in XeTeX isn't handling
> them properly.
>
> A possible workaround to try, as you're using a Mac: it *might* help
> to load them with the [Renderer=AAT] option (in fontspec). That will
> use the Mac's ATSUI system for text layout instead of ICU.

Using AAT seems to work.

As a side note, \fontspec[Letters=SmallCaps]{Minion Pro} produces
oldstyle figures. The same is true for Adobe Garamond Pro and Warnock
Pro. However, Arno Pro gives lining figures instead, and only gives
oldstyle figures when explicitly asked. Since Arno Pro is a rather new
font, perhaps Adobe is moving towards making oldstyle figure and
smallcaps independent. IIRC, their T1 fonts had these forms together
in various expert fonts.

> > I'm on Mac OS X 10.4.11 with XeTeX 0.996 and Fontspec 1.13.
>
> If someone out there has the latest versions of these fonts, and also
> has a recent XeTeX 0.997 build, I'd be interested to know whether the
> +onum feature works there. (I only have the older versions of these
> fonts.)

I will download 0.997 and give it a try. I'll report back on the
results later. Artemio pointed out his success with it, so this
problem may be fixed in 0.997.

James