[XeTeX] XeTeX, fontspec, OTF, and fontdimens

[mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011, Ulrike Fischer wrote:
> Yes, as I said size changes doesn't reload a font. WordSpace
> shouldn't be used as a "default" feature.

It doesn't matter whether it's being used as a default; the problem shows
up even without \defaultfontfeatures.  Are you saying that WordSpace
shouldn't be used at all?  It appears that WordSpace, whether default or
not, is incompatible with the LaTeX font-size commands, and it's not
practical to avoid using those.

> If your monospaced font has stretchable word space then simply reset
> \fontdimen3 + \fontdimen4.

Like most monospace fonts, mine doesn't have stretchable word space; but
XeTeX assumes stretchable word space for all OTF fonts.  I'm trying to
remove the stretchability.

Manually setting \fontdimen3 and \fontdimen4 seems to correctly change the
space stretchability - and in fact is the workaround I'm using for the
time being - but it must be repeated after every size change and so it
breaks semantic markup.  That is the case even with no use of WordSpace in
the document at all.
-- 
Matthew Skala
mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca                 People before principles.
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/