[XeTeX] Typographic question : quotation marks and apostrophes

[mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca]

On Sat, 17 Dec 2011, Tobias Schoel wrote:
> So we're back to the days, where one had to use escape sequences for quotation
> marks (\glq,\grq,"',"`,…) as though unicode had not included u2019.
>
> Even worse, because with OpenType some font designers might include
> substitution rules which include white space at font level. So, as an author,
> I have to bear in mind, that for one font I need to define \englishrightquote
> as u202f+u2019, and for other for another font I need to define it simply as

It has always been the case that if you want an effect different from what
was designed into the font, you had to do extra work.  Letterpress shops
used to have special tools for cutting and filing bits off of the metal
type sorts in order to do special positioning of glyphs.  There are some
nice photos here:
  http://blog.typoretum.co.uk/2009/04/01/cutting-in-letterpress-accents/

It shouldn't be surprising that if you want to use a font other than in
the way its designer intended, that requires some extra work and that that
extra work is different on a per-font basis.
-- 
Matthew Skala
mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca                 People before principles.
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/