[XeTeX] Problems in Devanagari typing.

[hanneder at staff.uni-marburg.de]

One year ago I tested all free and commercial Nagari fonts I could  
find (including all from CDAC distributed at the last World Sanskrit  
Conference). The result was disappointing. There are hardly any fonts  
which are without errors of placement as you describe etc.  
Unfortunately I did not start a catalogue of faults, because I could  
not really find anyone with who would be able to solve them.

Being no expert on either of the fields I cannot say whether it is a  
problem of the font or XeTeX or the interaction, but it means, if you  
have to print a book, there is only one or two that work and look o.k  
(for Sanskrit), that is, Devanagari Monotype and Sanskrit 2003, which  
is also fine, but it is really a bold font for verses, not for running  
text you want to read.

The situation remains quite unsatisfactory for TeX users, but perhaps  
also for others, which I think is absurd in view of the enormous  
Indian book market.

Best
J Hanneder

----- Nachricht von "S. venkataraman" <svenkat at ignou.ac.in> ---------
      Datum: Sun, 24 Nov 2013 20:13:04 +0530
        Von: "S. venkataraman" <svenkat at ignou.ac.in>
Antwort an: "XeTeX (Unicode-based TeX) discussion." <xetex at tug.org>
    Betreff: [XeTeX] Problems in Devanagari typing.
         An: xetex at tug.org


> I was looking for some free, unicode compliant,
> devanagari font family that  has regular, italic and bold variants.  I found
> that aksharyogini, CDAC-GISTYogesh, FreeSans and FreeSerif
> fit the bill. But, there are different problems with different fonts.
> Here is a minimal example with the problems explained with comments.
>   Yogesh font is OK but
> for the one problem.
> Is there a free font with all the three variants that works
> properly?
> *********example file begins***************
> \documentclass{article}
> \usepackage{ifxetex}
> \RequireXeTeX
> \usepackage{fontspec}
> \usepackage{xunicode}
> \usepackage{xltxtra}
> \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}
> \begin{document}
> \relax
> {\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.
> \end{document}
> **********************example file ends****************
> Dr. S. Venkataraman
> Associate Professor in Mathematics
> School of Sciences
> IGNOU
> Tel. :29572812


----- Ende der Nachricht von "S. venkataraman" <svenkat at ignou.ac.in> -----




---

Prof. Dr. Juergen Hanneder
Philipps-Universitaet Marburg
FG Indologie u. Tibetologie
Deutschhausstr.12
35032 Marburg
Germany
Tel. 0049-6421-28-24930
hanneder at staff.uni-marburg.de