[XeTeX] A simple font question

Jonathan Kew jonathan_kew at sil.org
Fri Feb 23 01:12:47 CET 2007


On 22 Feb 2007, at 3:23 pm, mjslouber at berkeley.edu wrote:

> Hi,
>
>     I am fairly new to the Tex world and I have a question about  
> changing
> fonts which is probably very basic.  I am running XeLaTeX in TeXShop
> on MacOSX.  I want to include symbols from a different font in my
> document and so far I have been getting an error message when I try to
> typeset the file.  In the past I used the following code and got
> correct results:
>
> \font\mathsymbols= "MSBM10" at 11pt
> \newcommand{\eyeskip}{\thinspace{\raise.9pt\hbox{\mathsymbols
> y}}\hbox{}\thinspace}
>

This looks like you're using a standard font from the TeX world,  
complete with .tfm file, etc., providing up to 256 characters,  
generally with a somewhat idiosyncratic encoding....

> But now I tried to modify this for my font called "Arial Unicode  
> MS"...
>

....whereas Arial Unicode MS is a Unicode-encoded TrueType font,  
which you want to access directly by Unicode character codes.

> %\font\othersymbols= "arialuni" at 11pt
> %\newcommand{\flower}{\thinspace{\raise.9pt\hbox{\othersymbols
> ?}}\hbox{}\thinspace}
>
> and I get the following error message:
>
> !Font\othersymbols=arialuni at 11.0pt not loadable: Metric (TFM)  
> file r
> inst alled font not found.
> I.123 \font\othersymbols="arialuni" at 11pt
>

Install the .ttf file in ~/Library/Fonts (if you haven't already),  
and then try

   \font\othersymbols = "Arial Unicode MS" at 11pt

instead. That's the font name. XeTeX loads your installed Unicode/ 
OpenType/TrueType fonts by *font name*, not file name. (This is a  
whole different mode of operation than using .tfm files.)

HTH,

JK





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