[XeTeX] Traditional TeX ligatures once again

[Alexej Kryukov]

On Thursday 28 June 2007 18:21, Jonathan Kew wrote:
>
> In the TeX-encoded Cyrillic fonts, to be more exact; not in Computer
> Modern Roman, AFAIK. 

In fact, these ligatures are normally available also in T1-encoded
fonts: try for example

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

\begin{document}

<<guillemets>>.

\end{document}

Of course they are not present in old CM fonts (OT1-encoded), which
don't have guillemets either.

> I think you should create a tex-cyrillic mapping, similar to the tex-
> text mapping but containing these replacements and any others that
> are normally expected (at the ligature level; not control sequences)
> by Cyrillic-script users. 

As you can see, the proper mappings for "<<" and ">>" are not
exclusively Cyrillic, and there are no other ligatures which would
be specific for traditional TeX Cyrillic encodings (e. g. T2A).
So, I don't think creating a special mapping just for Cyrillic-script
users makes any sense: to my mind, adding these 2 sequences
to tex-text would be much better. However, if tex-text is really
intended to emulate just the behavior found in old CM fonts (and not
DC, EC, etc.), then a new mapping is really needed, but it should be
called not "tex-cyrillic", but rather "tex-t1", "tex-ec" or so.

-- 
Regards,
Alexey Kryukov <anagnost {at} yandex {dot} ru>

Moscow State University
Historical Faculty