[XeTeX] Fontspec V3+ (was : fontspec manual 10.17 (scripts/languages))

[Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd)]

David Perry wrote: (concerning the current version of Fontspec :
full text at-end)

and I left the message flagged for attention because there were
points raised in it that suggested that at present, Fontspec may
be adopting a sub-optimal approach in some cases.  In particular,
David wrote :

> At first I told him to include
>
> \fontspec[Script=Devanagari]{Devanagari MT}
>
> but later realized that's only for OT. The second paragraph of 10.17
> does mention this, but a footnote or parenthetical remark ("Don't do
> this with AAT fonts!") might save people like me who work almost
> exclusively with OT from making silly mistakes.

In an ideal world, would not the syntax requirws for OT, AAT, and any
other format font, be identical, and should it not be the responsibility
of the font-handling package (Fontspec, in this case) to convert the
universal syntax to the particular syntax needed by the actual
instance of the font found ?  If others agree that this is desirable,
I wonder whether I might be permitted to raise it as a requested
feature for a future major release of Fontspec ?

Philip Taylor
--------
> I've been reading 10.17 (version of July 11, 2010) and have some
> questions, and found one typo.
> i
> 10.17 (the very beginning)
> It would be helpful to have an example of the script and language
> selection in use. I use the Junicode font, which contains an OT lookup
> to provide the Icelandic form of the letter thorn rather than the Old
> English form when text is tagged as Icelandic. What is wrong with this?
>
> \fontspec[Language=Icelandic]{Junicode}
> Þis is the letter þorn in the Icelandic language, using Junicode
>
> It compiles without protest, but I still get the default Old English
> shape for thorn. (My document is already using Latin script, so I didn't
> specify that specifically.)
>
> There may also be some interactions of script and language. A friend
> asked me to help him get Sanskrit working in XeLaTeX. He's using the
> Devanagari script (I am told that Sanskrit is sometimes written in other
> scripts). He's on a Mac using an AAT font, so he should only need to use:
>
> \fontspec{Devanagari MT}
>
> right? At first I told him to include
>
> \fontspec[Script=Devanagari]{Devanagari MT}
>
> but later realized that's only for OT. The second paragraph of 10.17
> does mention this, but a footnote or parenthetical remark ("Don't do
> this with AAT fonts!") might save people like me who work almost
> exclusively with OT from making silly mistakes.
>
> I take it he does NOT need to specify [Language=Sanskrit]. Later on, if
> he gets an OT font that has some special features for Sanskrit (if such
> a font exists--I'll call it RigVeda) and wants to use it on his Mac,
> then he would write:
>
> \fontspec[Script=Devanagari,Language=Sanskrit]{RigVeda}
>
> to automatically select the ICU renderer and enable the special stuff
> for Sanskrit. Yes?
>
> 10.17.1
> Typo: TRK is the tag for Turkish in OpenType; tur is the ISO tag. (See
> http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/ttoreg.htm) A brief
> explanation beyond the phrase "OpenType definition" might be helpful too
> for those who don't know the OT tags yet (especially since they are not
> the same as the ISO tags with which people might be familiar).
>
> The phrase "Further scripts . . . " confused me. First I thought it
> meant the ability to add scripts or languages not already defined in
> fontspec. But fontspec already knows all the ones that are defined in
> OpenType, so how could one add a new script if it doesn't have an OT
> tag, since the OT tag is required for the definition? And the examples
> showed a script and a language that are already in fontspec. Does it
> mean something different?
>
> Thanks - David
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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