[XeTeX] IPA characters

[George N. White III]

On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 11:28 AM, Hendrik Maryns
<hamaryns at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I found http://www.tug.org/pipermail/xetex/2004-December/001574.html, but it
> isn’t answered.
>
> So here a new try: I want to use some IPA characters in my document.  I can
> paste them in directly, it aren’t that much.  But they show up blank.

Does the document need to use a particular "body" font or can you be
flexible?  IPA glyphs are not universally included in fonts, so your options
are somewhat limited.

> I tried tipa, but didn’t get that to work either, and XeTeX is not mentioned
> in the manual.
>
> minimal example:
>
> \documentclass{scrartcl}
>
> \usepackage{fontspec}
>
> \begin{document}
>
> \emph{oma} eerder als een ‘korte a’ /ɑ/ uitgesprok
>
> alfabet bestaan daar reets tekens voor: ŋ, x, œ.
> verschillen: in Haarlem zou dat eerder ŋ, χ en œy
>
> \end{document}
>
> Solutions are welcomed with eternal gratitude.

I see many answers pointing out that the default font
for xelatex (latin modern) lacks IPA "characters",
but I expect it would be useful to know that there are
tools (BabbleMap for Windows) that allow you to
search for particular characters using the Unicode
coordinates.   Many GUI "write" programs include
a glyph search tool, and standalone tools are available
for Linux and Mac OS X.  To use them you will need to
install the fonts as "system fonts" -- this is mentioned in
the texlive documents.

-- 
George N. White III <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia