[XeTeX] Doubt about creating .tex file for use with xelatex

Zdenek Wagner zdenek.wagner at gmail.com
Sat Nov 10 18:20:00 CET 2012


2012/11/10 V. Sasi Kumar <sasi.fsf at gmail.com>:
> Dear friends,
>
> I have been using plain latex and omega (lamed) for creating documents
> in Malayalam and English for quite a few years now. Since these
> documents use ASCII text in the final output, they have limitations in
> search, copy/paste and indexing. Hence, I have been thinking of using
> xelatex, so that, as I understand, its output contains Unicode text that
> can be easily copied from the pdf file and searching inside the document
> also becomes possible. However, I have failed in all my attempts to
> create one document in Malayalam that can be compiled using xelatex. I
> seem to get errors that I am not able to identify.
>
Without the minimal sample and the log file no one can help you. There
may be numerous reasons.

> I have been able to run a normal .tex file with only English text and
> get a good output. Now, I need to understand how I can include Malayalam
> text also in the document. Any help in terms of a pointer to a good
> tutorial or a sample document would be very useful.
>
I do not know Malayalam so I cannot test whether the output is right.
The source code was

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont[Script=Malayalam]{FreeSans}
\begin{document}
പിറന്നാള്‍ ആശംസ
\end{document}

The PDF is attached. I have noticed that there is no Malayalam support
in Polyglossia. It could be added but somebody will have to supply the
definition of \today and macros as \chaptername, \figurename,
\contentsname etc. It will then be easier to write multilingual texts.

You can, of course, use any OpenType Malayalam font. Be sure that you
have recent GNU FreeFont.

Indexing should also be easy. I do not know the current status of
Malayalam in xindy but I can easily modify my not yet released module
to include also Malayalam. My module is available from
http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz/xindy-devanagari/
What I need is the explanation of the sort rules, list of sample words
with the correct order specified and a sample text with a lot of words
marked to appear in the index.

> Regards and thanks in advance,
> Sasi
> --
> V. Sasi Kumar
> Free Software Foundation of India
> http://swatantryam.blogspot.com
>
>
>
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-- 
Zdeněk Wagner
http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz
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