[XeTeX] Copy and paste of oldstyle numbers of the latin modern font

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Tue, 6 May 2008 02:13:32 +0930 schrieb Will Robertson:

> Hi,
> 
> If I paste the text and chose another font with OSF (like Warnock Pro)  
> then the numbers do display correctly. 

I would say that works for this font only by accident. With e.g.
Palatino Linotype it doesn't work. 

And with palatino you get 10 points if you copy the 5 numbers to winedt:
..........
Also the palatino font gives a warning:
** WARNING ** No Unicode mapping available: GID=363, name=(none)

So on the whole it looks as if each font handles this different. And a
good solution would need some action at the xetex/xdvipdfmx level. 

> I'm guessing you want to be able to copy the numbers directly without
> the style info;

Yes. After all it is only a *style*. If styles like bold or italic are
preserved during copying it is ok. But the important thing is the
meaning. 

> this would need something like pdfTeX's cmap package, which inserts
> /ToUnicode markers into the PDF stream.

I looked at cmap but as it use \pdfobj it can not be adapted simply to
xetex. 

> 
> I don't know anything that does this for XeTeX (but I don't know a  
> thing about xdvipdfmx). Jonathan has mentioned before that he doesn't  
> really "believe" in being able to robustly copy material from PDF  
> output -- but this seems like a particularly inconvenient case.

Yes. 

-- 
Ulrike Fischer