[XeTeX] XeLaTex and Armenian

[Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd)]

Dear Adam --

> I'm new to XeLaTex, but I've done some simple documents with Greek,
> Arabic, and Hebrew. Today, however, I tried one with some Armenian text
> but had no luck at all. Armenian seems not to be recognized. What am I
> missing?

I don't know !  I know next to nothing about XeTeX, Polyglossia
and whatever, but using your file as a starting point, Jonathan's
reply to another Armenian scholar (Tara Andrews) as reference [1],
and finally using TeXdoc fontspec, I came up with the following :

\documentclass {article}
\usepackage {xltxtra, polyglossia}
\usepackage {fontspec}
\setdefaultlanguage {english}
\newfontface \armfont [Script=armenian]{Arial Unicode MS}
\def \ARMENIAN #1{{\armfont #1}}
\begin {document}
\title {Classical Armenian Sample Text}
\author {Adam C. McCollum}
\maketitle

\ARMENIAN {Եւ երկիր էր աներևոյթ և անպատրաստ. և խաւար ի վերայ անդնդոց. և Հոգի Աստուծոյ շրջէր ի վերայ ջուրց:}

\end{document}

It may not be elegant, but it seems to work.

Philip Taylor
--------
[1] http://osdir.com/ml/tex.xetex/2005-05/msg00029.html