[OS X TeX] Re: Egyptian hieroglyphs and Babylonian cuneiform

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 13.08.2008 um 22:55 schrieb John B. Thoo:

> Now, on CTAN is fonts/cun (Date 2007-09-15) for cuneiform, but I  
> don't see a fonts/cun in my installation.  Is that because I have  
> TeX Live 2007 and not TeX Live 2008?

No.

> Would installing TeX Live 2008 give me fonts/cun that, perhaps,  
> would be just as easy to use as the hieroglf?

No.

> Or can I simply download fonts/cun from CTAN and use them "out of  
> the box" like hieroglf?

First I would check what Peter R. Wilson's two packages ugarite  
(Ugaritic cuneiform, 'texdoc ugarite', 'texdoc tryugarite') and  
oldprsn (old Persian cuneiform, 'texdoc oldprsn', 'texdoc  
tryoldprsn') offer. They are based on PostScript fonts, which easily  
scale in PDF and look smooth.

>
> The first line on that Web page reads, "This tutorial assumes that  
> you have installed Gerben Wierda's distribution of teTEX and TEX  
> Live for OS X, through i-Installer, and a front end to this  
> distribution (like TEXShop, iTEXMac, OzTEX, CMacTEX or TEX  
> Tools)."  I'm using TeX Live from tug.org and do my typesetting in  
> an XTerm window, so can I still try to follow the instructions on  
> this Web page?

Yes, you can. You just would need to translate path names from teTeX/ 
gwTeX to TeX Live 2007.

>
> I will keep this in mind.  However, at this time I would rather not  
> have to become familiar with XeTeX (whatever that is, because I'm  
> not very good at using what I currently have as it is) if I can get  
> around it.


By keeping the encoding of the (La)TeX files as UTF-8 or UTF-16 you  
can easily substitute the tex command with xetex and the latex  
command with xelatex. To do some more you can read the fontspec  
documentation (texdoc fontspec). There are one or two more things ...

--
Greetings

   Pete

’Twas a woman who drove me to drink, and I never had the courtesy to  
thank her for it.
				— W.C. Fields