[XeTeX] [OT] Free fonts for fontspec examples?

[David Perry]

Will Robertson wrote:

> The reason the naming scheme is so chaotic is that it was first written 
> to support Mac OS X AAT fonts (this was before XeTeX supported 
> OpenType!) 
I suspected that was the case, thanks for confirming.
> 
> I'm trying to document OpenType font features now with clear reference 
> to the actual feature tag, but I'm aware some of my terminology still 
> needs to be updated. Please do tell me if you find an unclear paragraph 
> (or twenty) in the manual and I'll do what I can to clear things up.

> For the hypothetical fontspec v3.0, I would like to totally revisit all 
> of the feature names (while supporting backwards compatibility of 
> course) but it's a big job for not much reward :)
Your efforts are much appreciated, and I am happy to help in any way I 
can.  I'll read the most recent fontspec manual in the next few days and 
let you know if anything seems unclear.
> 
> It might also be useful for advanced users to be able to type
> 
>    \fontspec[ss01,hlig,cwsh]{...}
That would be very nice!

> I only just heard about these new features, too. I would also like to 
> see some examples -- I assume that a feature name like
> 
>     CharacterVariant=0/1/2/3/4...
> 
> would be fine for fontspec?
Sure, or cv01 (like ss01) if you implement the short tags.  Fontspec is 
unusual in that it lets (actually, requires) users to request stylistic 
alternates by number.  Most programs present the alternates visually in 
a character palette.  So for XeTeX users, from one point of view, 
there's no advantage to having the cvXX option available.  However, I 
think having cvXX might help interchange of data with other software. 
An XML document, for instance, might request a particular variant by 
number with cvXX.  Then the data could be brought easily into XeTeX if 
fontspec could access the characters the same way.  I also hope that 
programs like InDesign will support cvXX in the future.


David