[XeTeX] Mixed Roman and Indian alphabets for Sanskrit

Philip Taylor P.Taylor at Rhul.Ac.Uk
Thu Feb 16 18:57:47 CET 2017



Dominik Wujastyk wrote:
> Yes, and it's this very assumption that is unhelpful, Phil, and leads to confusion. 
Now /I/ am confused (a not-uncommon state as my 70th birthday approaches with ever-increasing speed).  Are you saying (a) that my assumption is a common assumption, but is wrong (in which case, what /does/ Polyglossia mean by "\sanskritfont); or (b) that my assumption is correct (and if so, in what way is it  unhelpful ?).  I understand that one may wish to set Sanskrit in a number of fonts within a single text, but TeX is a dynamic language and one can (surely) re-define "\sanskritfont" just as often as one chooses, can one not ?  In my own work, I routinely re-define (e.g.,) "\romanfont", "\italicfont" and so on any number of times, to reflect what the intended expansion of those control sequences are at any particular point in the document. 

More importantly (IMHO) do you agree that the terminology originates not within Polyglossia but within the Opentype specification, in which case (just as with Unicode) we must surely learn to live with it rather than rail against its deficiencies.
> Also, it's common for academics to use multiple scripts for Sanskrit within a single document (typically Devanagari and Latin transliteration). 
I /think/ that this is covered by what I wrote above, but if I am wrong, please correct me.

** Phil.
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