[XeTeX] Russian fonts

[Jonathan Kew]

On 16 Jan 2009, at 11:45, Olly Powell wrote:

> Sorry, I forgot to include the Preamble.
>
> Jonathan's answer is spot on.  Works perfectly in Times new Roman  
> works perfectly.
>
> \documentclass{book}
> \usepackage{fontspec,xunicode,xltxtra}
> \newcommand{\russ}[1]{{\fontspec{Times New Roman}#1}}
> \newcommand{\rusp}[1]{{\fontspec{Perestroika}#1}}
>

Note that if you select a suitable font (that includes Cyrillic as  
well as Latin) using \setmainfont, you don't need to do anything  
further in order for Russian text to show up properly as well.

(If you need hyphenation within the russian, then you'll need to  
switch languages using babel or polyglossia; that's a separate matter  
from the font/encoding issue.)

Also, if you do want to create commands like this, don't use \fontspec  
directly in them; it's much more efficient to use \newfontfamily to  
declare the family you want to use, and then use this within your  
markup commands:

   \newfontfamily{\russfam}[Script=Cyrillic]{Times New Roman}
   \newcommand{\russ}[1]{{\russfam #1}}

or something like that. (The Script=Cyrillic option may not be needed,  
but in theory at least, a font could contain separate kerning or other  
tables for Cyrillic vs Latin, in which case this would activate the  
appropriate features.) See the fontspec manual for more details.

JK