[XeTeX] Newbie Question

Alex Hamann mailinglist at alex-hamann.de
Thu May 7 20:47:22 CEST 2009


On 07.05.2009, at 18:43, Gareth Hughes wrote:

> Alex Hamann wrote:
>> Hoefler fonts are really just an example which can be replaced by any
>> other system font you have on your computer. I am not familiar with
>> ubuntu enough to tell you where you can find all fonts available on
>> your system but all fonts that you see e.g. in OpenOffice will be
>> available to be used through xelatex and fontspec. I would not buy
>> any font at this point and instead familiarize yourself with xelatex
>> first.
>
> An increasing number of XeTeX users are non-Mac users, but Hoefler  
> Text
> is all over the documentation. I believe that we need better
> documentation for XeTeX, but can we move the examples over to freely
> distributed fonts, with links for download, so that beginners can
> replicate examples exactly?
>
> Gareth.
>
>

I guess Hoefler was a natural choice in the beginning since it is  
being shipped with Mac OS X and therefore (in the early days of XeTeX  
and fontspec) it could be assumed that all users would be able to  
process the examples and it also seems to be a quite complete font.
While I am not sure how much an effort it would be to rewrite e.g.  
the fontspec manual and replace Hoefler with another font I am also  
not sure whether this would be tremendously helpful - after all it is  
mentioned that Hoefler is just an example and that all system fonts  
can be used just as well.
I think it has been noted a few times on this list that a  
comprehensive manual for new users of XeLaTeX would be desirable but  
overall I don't see anybody engaging in it and also think that the  
learning curve is not too steep...
Then again, I never used to replicate examples that much when trying  
to learn a new latex package - for those who do so, your suggestion  
might really be helpful.

Alex 


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