[XeTeX] Kashida environment

[Gareth Hughes]

Fr. Michael Gilmary wrote:
> Fr. Michael Gilmary wrote:
> 
>> Well, I think I've got an environment for kashida. Please test it out
>> and change whatever is necessary. It seems to work here with the
>> attached example. Please note that I am no programmer and know very
>> little of the TeX or XeTeX internals. I got lucky with modifying just
>> a couple things from Jonathan's code. 
> 
> 
> It seems to me that, if others think this is useful, then maybe it
> should be included as an environment option in polyglossia (it seems
> pointless in shorter runs of text, no?) rather than a separate package
> --- since I can't imagine how to use it independently of polyglossia and
> friends (fontspec, bidi, etc).
> 
> Certainly, if desired, other glyphs could be mapped for Urdu, etc, as
> the present maps only include Arabic, Farsi and Syriac. However, I'm
> completely ignorant of what those glyphs would be since I know nothing
> of those languages.
> 
> Possible use in polyglossia:
> 
> In the preamble:
> 
> \setotherlanguages{syriac, farsi, arabic} % or whatever else
> 
> %% and define some appropriate font(s)
> 
> \begin{syriac_or_Arabic_or_farsi}[kashida]
> insert text here
> \end{syriac_or_Arabic_or_farsi}
> 
> Any thoughts, François?

Fr Michael, thank you for the environment version of kashida. I couldn't
work out how to do it, but that makes sense now.

I think the inclusion of this in Polyglossia makes sense. I'm slowly
writing a Syriac package, and have included it in that at the moment.
However, if kashida is multilingual, it should be in Polyglossia. The
only question I have is whether we might want to split kashida into
different script versions in the future.

Gareth.

-- 
Gareth Hughes
Doctoral candidate in Syriac studies

Department of Eastern Christianity
Oriental Institute
Pusey Lane
Oxford
OX1 2LE

+44 (0)1865 275134