[XeTeX] Ligature unavailable in Estrangelo Antioch

Gareth Hughes garzohugo at gmail.com
Sat May 16 23:00:50 CEST 2009


Jonathan Kew wrote:
> 
> Sorry, you're not going to be able to do this with the current xetex
> OpenType implementation. For "complex" scripts (those such as Arabic,
> Syriac, or Indic scripts that have specialized "shaping engines"), there
> is not yet any support for specifying additional features; that is only
> supported for the "generic" engine that handles Latin and similar scripts.

That's not good news, as it means that 'complex' fonts have to be
otherwise static, not offering alternative glyphs. Reading between your
lines, you seem to suggest that this is due to the way XeTeX handles
OpenType, right? If this is the case, is there any plan to support
alternatives?
> 
> As for one-of-many lookups, you'd do that by passing a parameter to the
> feature tag, as in
> 
>   \font\xyz = "My Font:salt=2"
> 
> to get the third alternate (they're indexed from zero). That should work
> in a Latin font with a salt feature, but it won't currently work in
> conjunction with Syriac.

That's helpful to know. I don't know if that's stated anywhere in the
documentation.

> And about multiple ssNN sets: each of the ssNN features is entirely
> separate, and you can enable as many of them as you like. The end result
> will depend on how the font developer has organized the lookups (and
> *not* on the order you list the features). It's up to the font designer
> to decide how "overlapping" features should interact if they are
> requested together.

I suspected as much. Unfortunately, many font designers don't have
XeTeX, or any decent OpenType-ready application, in mind when they
compose the tables.

Thanks,

Gareth.

-- 
Gareth Hughes

Department of Eastern Christianity
Oriental Institute
Pusey Lane
Oxford
OX1 2LE

+44 (0)1865 610227


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