[XeTeX] loosing some active characters

[Jonathan Kew]

On 12 Jun 2008, at 2:29 pm, François Patte wrote:

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> Bonsoir,
>
> I used to type: --- in order to get a punctuation dash with latex.  
> This
> is no more true with xelatex... Did I forgot something?

That wasn't actually an "active character" in latex, it's a ligature  
in the traditional TeX fonts.

If you're loading fonts in xelatex through fontspec, you want to  
apply the "tex-text" font mapping to provide this functionality:

   \documentclass{....}
   \usepackage{fontspec}
   \setmainfont[Mapping=tex-text]{MyFontName}
   ....etc...

Or to apply this to all fonts by default:

   \documentclass{....}
   \usepackage{fontspec}
   \defaultfontfeatures{Mapping=tex-text}
   \setmainfont{MyFontName}
   \setsansfont{MySansSerifFont}
   ....etc...


JK