[XeTeX] Problems in Devanagari typing.

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 24.11.2013 um 15:43 schrieb S. venkataraman:

> \usepackage{ifxetex}
> \RequireXeTeX

In your example you do not need these. The ifxetex package offers to \ifxetex … \else … \fi, is unknown to me, it looks like a command to be used in a class file.

> \usepackage{fontspec}
> \usepackage{xunicode}
> \usepackage{xltxtra}

The fontspec package loads the other two.

> \newfontface\yogesh[Script=Devanagari,Ligatures=TeX]{CDAC-GISTYogesh}
> \newfontface\aksharygni[Script=Devanagari,Ligatures=TeX]{Aksharyogini}
> \newfontface\freeserif[Script=Devanagari,Ligatures=TeX]{FreeSerif}
> \newfontface\freesans[Script=Devanagari,Ligatures=TeX]{FreeSans}

For the block above you can use

	\defaultfontfeatures{Ligatures=TeX}	%formerly [Mapping=tex-text]

> {\yogesh विकर्णनीय  द्वि-आधारी संक्रिया}\\ %problem with the first word.
> Repha is positioned wrongly.
> {\aksharygni विकर्णनीय  द्वि-आधारी संक्रिया}\\ %problem with second word.
> dvi ligature is not correct.
> {\freeserif विकर्णनीय  द्वि-आधारी संक्रिया}\\ %Problem with second and
> third words. dvi ligature is not correct and kri ligature is not correct.
> {\freesans विकर्णनीय  द्वि-आधारी संक्रिया}\\ %kri ligature is not correct.

How do these texts appear in an Unicode aware text editor? Could be the fonts are not perfect.

Can the shape be improved by loading the polyglossia package and using, in the preamble, these?

	\setdefaultlanguage{sanskrit}	% maybe devanagari works too, but I don't see this documented
	\setotherlanguage{english}

For this you would need to make four different test cases and could only test one font by the LaTeX document, the one used by

	\newfontface\sanskritfont[Script=Devanagari]{<font>}
	\newfontface\englishfont{<font>}

or

	\newfontfamily\sanskritfont[Script=Devanagari]{<font>}
	\newfontfamily\englishfont{<font>}

Can you improve the shape of the characters by using font features in their raw form? for example:

	\newfontfamily\sanskritfont[Script=Devanagari, RawFeature=+<this>, RawFeature=+<that>]{<font>}

You can also switch off certain font features by using "-" instead of "+". Note that XeTeX is not perfect yet in shaping Indian scripts.

--
Greetings

  Pete

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