[XeTeX] Using Persian tfm and Type1 fonts

[Jonathan Kew]

On 11 Jul 2008, at 2:07 PM, VAFA KHALIGHI wrote:

> How can you use tfm and Type1 fonts in XeTeX?
> How do you load them?
> How can you use them?
> Thanks

Short answer: Just like you would in TeX with DVIPDFMx as the output  
driver.

Beware, though: By default XeTeX will (attempt to) interpret 8-bit  
text input as UTF-8, which may not be what you want if you're trying  
to use legacy Type 1 fonts and associated TFMs designed for some 8-bit  
encoding of Persian.

You could inhibit that by setting the input encoding to "bytes", but  
by the time you've done this, you might as well be using an old 8-bit  
TeX system. And you'd still need to be careful about anything written  
to auxiliary files, which will get UTF-8 encoded as if it were real  
Unicode.

If you want to mix legacy Persian text (using 8-bit font encodings and  
TFM files) with Unicode text (using Unicode-based OpenType fonts),  
you're going to have to be very careful about managing the mixture of  
text encodings involved. My advice would be to forget the whole idea,  
and use Unicode-compliant text and fonts throughout. Anything else is  
a recipe for pain, and undermines most of the benefits of XeTeX.

JK