[XeTeX] XeTeX 0.9999.2 released

[Zdenek Wagner]

2013/4/7 Jonathan Kew <jfkthame at googlemail.com>:
> On 7/4/13 19:13, Zdenek Wagner wrote:
>>
>> 2013/4/7 Khaled Hosny <khaledhosny at eglug.org>:
>>>
>>> On Sun, Apr 07, 2013 at 07:50:31PM +0200, Zdenek Wagner wrote:
>>>>
>>>> 2013/4/7 Khaled Hosny <khaledhosny at eglug.org>:
>>>>>
>>>>> Could you please upload the fonts you are using (or point to where to
>>>>> get them), especially the unreleased version of the fonts.
>>>>>
>>>> The official release as well as the URL of the svn repository can be
>>>> found at
>>>> https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/freefont/
>>>
>>>
>>> The SVN repository does not include font files only the sources, trying
>>> to build the fonts gives me a gazillion of errors and not fonts are
>>> generated, but even if it succeeded I'd still want the exact files you
>>> have since different versions of FontForge can give different output.
>>>
>> OK, I have just published my build. There were no errors.
>
>
> My impression is that indic support in gnu freefont is something of a moving
> target. You might like to test (instead or as well) with the lohit fonts,
> which I think may be more stable/mature.
>
Yes, lohit fonts are more stable but the Devanagari fonts are either
suitable for Sanskrit (for Hindi, Marathi, Nepali and other languages
a user has to enter a lot of ZWNJ characters in order to break
unwanted conjuncts) or suitable for modern languages and not for
Sanskrit. FreeSerif implements the languages correctly. The positions
of matras were fine tuned both in FreeSerif and FreeSans, other fonts
might need some improvement. Typography in indic languages requires
larger spaces preceding dandas, double dandas, question marks and
exclamation marks. It is done properly both in FreeSans and FreeSerif
but not in other fonts. Users in India often insert normal spaces in
front of interpunction which results in dandas appearing at the
beginning of a line. GNU FreeFont does not need such spaces in front
of interpunction. I do not understand the internals of OpenType, I can
only display the test results and mark what is wrong. I do not know
whether fonts have to be fixed or whether this is a bug in HarfBuzz.
The fonts work fine with XeTeX from TeX Live 2012.

There is another strange thing. The CSS from gmail and facebook are
unrečadable thus I cannot figure out which fonts are used. In both of
these webs Hindi texts are displayed incorrectly. If I force firefox
to use locally installed FreeSerif and not the fonts required by CSS,
all Hindi texts are correct. I have to report it to firefox
developers.

> JK
>
>
>
>
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--
Zdeněk Wagner
http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz