[XeTeX] lacking precomposed character

[John Was]

Oh, it's probably still in vertical mode at the start of the line - just put \leavevmode at the start of the definition (either of \overstrike or of the schwa:

\def\ə{\leavevmode \overstrike{ə}{¯}}



Hope that works!


John

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: jadolov k 
  To: Unicode-based TeX for Mac OS X and other platforms 
  Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2009 12:15 AM
  Subject: Re: [XeTeX] lacking precomposed character


  Oh, thank you this is almost what I needed. 
  I say almost because it works quite well in the middle of a word, but if the line contains only that glyph (this is what I've done as a first try), the macron ends up to go below the letter, instead of going above it...
  I wish I knew the syntax of TeX as well as you do, but unfortunately I don't. I tried to change some of the parameters of the \def you suggested, but it went even worse, so I gave up.
  However, thank you very much.
  A.K.



  On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 9:37 PM, John Was <john.was at ntlworld.com> wrote:

    Hello Artemij

    As an interim measure (until an elegant solution is suggested), you can set the non-zero-width macron (positiong 00AF) on top of the schwa thus:

    \def\overstrike#1#2{\setbox0=\hbox{#1}\setbox1=\hbox{#2}\copy0

       \kern -0.5\wd0 \kern -0.5\wd1 \copy1 \kern -0.5\wd1 \kern 0.5\wd0}



    \overstrike{ə}{¯}



    Of course that is tedious to type, so, after defining \overstrike as above, you can use something like





    \def\ə{\overstrike{ə}{¯}}



    Then for the schwa with macron just type {\ə} or simply \ə if you don't mind adding a space after it in the middle of a word, and an explicit space (\ ) after it if it comes at the end of a word (personally I prefer {\ə}so one doesn't have to think about the following space).



    This isn't very nice but it might help if you are in a hurry to get through some piece of work, and you can search and replace on it afterwards when something better is suggested.



    Best





    John















      ----- Original Message ----- 
      From: jadolov k 
      To: Unicode-based TeX for Mac OS X and other platforms 
      Sent: Monday, May 18, 2009 2:58 PM
      Subject: [XeTeX] lacking precomposed character


      Hi to all, 
      What I need to obtain is a certain character with the macro sign above it (namely, a schwa with a macron, that serves to the transliteration needs for Ancient Indonesian). However, the Unicode standard lacks a precomposed entry for that character. Still, with the package Xunicode I can use the command \= to add a combining unicode compliant macron sign to any character (can't I?). The problem is that the font I use (Minion Pro) does not have a good combining macron glyph. Therefore, when I write \={<something_strange>} I obtain only this <something_strange> followed by a null character instead of being "covered" with a macron. 
      So, my question is: is there some way to substitute the glyph used by Xunicode as the macron sign? something similar to the command \textsuperscript* or \fakesuperscript provided by the package xltxtra.
      Any idea?
      Thank all the people in advance.
      Artemij Keidan

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