[XeTeX] stacking diacritics without mark-to-mark

BPJ bpj at melroch.se
Thu Mar 13 08:50:52 CET 2014


If the problem is only one specific letter with two specific diacritics you
can hack a solution by writing a (La)TeX macro which puts the letter and
marks into boxes and position them by trial and error using fractions of
the width/height of the boxes rather than absolute lengths. Once you have
calculated the numbers you just wrap the macro invocation in another macro
for the specific letter+marks combo. I had to do that last year, so I'll
see if I can find the file when I get on that machine later today. Not
terribly elegant but the results were acceptable.
Den 13 mar 2014 04:28 skrev "Mike Maxwell" <maxwell at umiacs.umd.edu>:

> On 3/12/2014 10:19 PM, Andrew Cunningham wrote:
>
>> Although personaly I'd consider such a solution a poor hack compared to a
>> well
>> designed font that is fit for purpose.
>>
>
> I won't disagree.  We've been told by the publisher, who original built
> the font (or more likely subcontracted it) that the problem is a
> shortcoming of their OpenType font files, that could only be eliminated by
> revising the font as a whole.  I'm inclined to tell them to go for it, or
> else we'll use a font that does work (Charis SIL comes to mind).  That
> would have the unfortunate consequence that the first book in our series
> would use the publisher's font (we didn't have the stacked diacritic
> problem in that book), but the rest of the books in the series would use
> some other font.
>
> But in order to convince them to make such a change, I need to understand
> better what is involved in revising a font to make mark-to-mark positioning
> work.  I gather that only the diacritics need the two mark-to-mark points
> (top and bottom) to be defined, not every character--correct?
>
> Is it done at the character level, or at the glyph level?  Does it need to
> be done separately for each point size/ weight/ style that the font
> supports?
>
> And do those attachment points need to be defined manually, or is there a
> way to automate that process?  Can this be done in a tool like FontForge,
> or does one need specialized tools that only the font manufacturer would
> have?
>
> I'm assuming that base characters already have top and bottom marks, but
> that may not be a safe assumption.  The problems we've seen so far have
> been with stacked diacritics.
>
> And of course there may be a better forum than this to ask this question.
> --
>         Mike Maxwell
>         maxwell at umiacs.umd.edu
>         "My definition of an interesting universe is
>         one that has the capacity to study itself."
>         --Stephen Eastmond
>
>
>
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