[XeTeX] Roman Numerals as stylistic alternatives

[Tobias Schoel]

Hi,

>> Other viewers don't understand this, as expected. I still feel that it's quite useless:
>> if I find "Louis XIV" I may want to copy it and get the real name, not "Louis 14".
>
> Sure.
> It is your job as author to decide what your readers should get.

And it's the users right to use what he gets as he wants. So the author 
should deliver a product that is easy and variable to use.

> If you want them to get  "Louis XIV"  then no /ActualText is required.
> *unless* that X I and V are really: U+2169 U+2160 U+2164 .
> In that case you may want the /ActualText  to replace with "XIV" so that
> your readers don't end up with the undefined character symbol.
As Unicode says: these Codepoints are deprecated. So the letters XIV 
should be prefered. (And I'd still say, that the number 14 is preferable.)
>
> Or maybe you want them to get  "Louis quatorze".
> Probably you do want a screen reader to say "Louis quatorze",
> but then you'll want to test that AR reads it correctly
> --- maybe  /Alt(Louie katorze)  will be better.

Indeed there should be different substitutions depending on the purpose. 
At least arabic numerals (for numerical use as in spreadsheets), letters 
(for text use as copypasting to text documents) and screenreader text 
(for screenreader use) are important. Next to that are different 
languages. (I don't know about the English way in reading theses names, 
but in German contexts they are mostly read in German and partly read in 
the source language: So "Ludwig der Vierzehnte" or "Louis quatorze")

So one might want a package, which offers a macro \romannumeral{14}, 
which produces the glyphs (intended to be used by the font author) and 
adds appropriate PDF-specials whose content is based on the active 
language. At least, it should offer option keys to set these contents by 
hand e.g.

Louis \romannumeral[screenreader="katorze",replacement_text="quatorze", 
use_font_symbols]{14}

> This kind of stuff adds a whole new dimension to typesetting.

No, it simply allows the first and foremost dimension of typesetting to 
use the capabilities of modern media: to ease convey the meaning without 
distracting the user.

ciao

Toscho

PS: I can't do it myself but would appreciate it a lot, if someone could 
create such a package.