[XeTeX] IPA superscript diacritics

[Ross Moore]

Hi Phil, Kevin and others,

On 07/11/2010, at 10:30 AM, Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd) wrote:

> I can't reproduce the problem here.  I processed your
> source file using XeLaTeX, opened the resulting PDF
> in Adobe Acrobat Reader 9, copied the entire text,
> pasted it into WordPad, selected each superscript
> in turn, and used each in a Ctrl-F "Find" dialogue :
> only the superscript was found in each case, not
> the similar-looking normal character.

Similarly there's no problem with Adobe Reader 10
nor Acrobat Pro 10.

So Kevin, what versions of Reader were you using?
Similarly, what screen-reading software are you using?
How old is it?


As for screen reading, when I use "Read Out Loud" on the
(Kevin's) example PDF, the superscripted IPA characters 
are just not read at all. Presumably they need to be tagged
with an /Alt replacement text for Reader to know what to say.

What would you like to hear for these?



Hope this helps,

	Ross

> 
> Philip Taylor (Win/XP; SP3)
> --------
> Kevin Russell wrote:
>> 
>> I'm attaching a LaTeX file and the resulting PDF (from MacTeX2008).
>> 
>> The problem is that the text:
>> [tʰ] should not be [th], nor [mʲ] like [mj], or [kʷ] like [kw].
>> 
>> gets treated (copy-and-pasted, screen-read) by the PDF viewers as:
>> [th] should not be [th], nor [mj] like [mj], or [kw] like [kw].
>> 
>> The Unicode character for IPA diacritic ʰ shouldn't be treated as ASCII
>> h in superscript any more than Cyrillic н should be treated as ASCII h
>> in small caps.
>> 
>> After more poking around, the problem seems to be in the PDF viewers and
>> I'd guess that XeLaTeX has put the right Unicode characters into the
>> file. Mac Preview claims to find two instances of "[th]" while also
>> claiming to find one instance of "[tʰ]", though it fails to highlight
>> it. Adobe Reader claims to find two instances of both "[th]" and "[tʰ]",
>> but highlights apparently at random. Skim finds only "[th]". All three
>> viewers act the same way for a PDF file (using Gentium) exported from
>> OpenOffice.
>> 
>> -- Kevin Russell
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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Ross Moore                                       ross.moore at mq.edu.au 
Mathematics Department                           office: E7A-419      
Macquarie University                             tel: +61 (0)2 9850 8955
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