[OS X TeX] Accented characters in Xe(La)TeX

[cfrees at imapmail.org]

On Sat 29th May, 2010 at 09:19, Ross Moore seems to have written:

> Hello Clea,
>
> On 29/05/2010, at 9:04 AM, Dr. Clea F. Rees wrote:
>
>> Could somebody point me towards documentation explaining the way that
>> Xe(La)TeX finds and uses fonts and/or typesets characters?
>> 
>> I'm specifically interested in a couple of things:
>> 
>> 1) persuading XeLaTeX to typeset accented characters correctly when
>> using non-default fonts (e.g. ^W, ^Y, ^w, ^y, "W, "w etc. in
>> Skia, Venturis ADF, Hoefler Text etc. as opposed to Latin Modern);
>
> These are all Unicode characters, so provided the font supports them
> and you have loaded   \usepackage{fontspec}
> (which in turn calls    \usepackage{xunicode} )
(Actually, I think xunicode needs to be loaded separately.)
> then it should just work with the usual TeX accent macros:
>
>  \^W \^Y \^w \^y \"W \"w  etc.
>
> Of course you need to use  fontspec's  commands for
> setting the fonts to be used in your document.
>

Just to make sure I'm not misunderstanding:

% !TEX TS-program = XeLaTeX
% !TEX encoding = UTF-8 Unicode
\listfiles
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\defaultfontfeatures{Mapping=tex-text}
\usepackage{xunicode} 
\pagestyle{empty}
\begin{document}

\def\fytest{ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz\\ff ffi ffl fi fl \^A\^E\^I\^O\^U\^W\^Y \^a\^e\^i\^o\^u\^w\^y \"A\"E\"I\"O\"U \"a\"e\"i\"o\"u \AE\OE\ae\oe{\ss} \textcopyright\pounds\\ÂÊÎÔÛŴŶ âêîôûŵŷ ËÏẄŸ ëïẅÿ 0123456789}

\noindent
Default (Latin Modern):\\
\fytest\\
Skia:\\
{\fontspec[Numbers=Lining]{Skia}\fytest}\\
{\fontspec[Numbers=OldStyle]{Skia}\fytest}\\
Hoefler Text:\\
{\fontspec{Hoefler Text}\fytest}\\
Venturis ADF:\\
{\fontspec{Venturis ADF}\fytest}\\

\end{document}

*should* do the trick? It doesn't seem to except for Latin Modern. Skia
and Hoefler Text include some missing characters; Venturis gives
frankly weird output.

I take it the missing characters (^W, ^Y etc.) are due to Skia, Hoefler
and Venturis lacking them. So  unlike TeX, XeTeX does not or cannot
create accented glyphs on the fly?

But the weird output I see from Venturis isn't explained by this - that
looks more like an encoding problem which is why I wondered if I needed
to provide more information.

>> 
>> 2) identifying which font files XeLaTeX is using in a particular run
>> (pdfTeX gives at least some of this information e.g. it lists the TTF
>> or PFB files it used but I don't know how to get XeLaTeX to do this);
>
> XeTeX doesn't do it directly.
> Rather it passes this task to the OS, which gets it from
> /Library/Fonts  just like any other Mac application.
>

Which means that XeTeX on a Mac will *never* use type 1 fonts, TFM
files etc.? (So it reads pdftex.map to no real purpose?)

>> 
>> 3) understanding how to work out how to access particular features in
>> OTF fonts e.g. OSF in Venturis ADF (as opposed to OSF in Skia which
>> seems unproblematic), for example.
>
> Join the XeTeX mailing list.
> This is all discussed there, so you can find it in the Archives.
>
>   http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex
>
Thanks.
>> 
>> I'd really like a pointer to some straightforward documentation.
>> fontspec and the font-info are not giving me the answers I had hoped
>> for!
>
> The XeTeX list is the correct place for such a question.
>
Thanks.

- cfr

PS I'm not sure why my name isn't appearing but only my email address -
it is there in my config and appears in the "To:" when people reply to
me. I just updated to the latest version (after some build wobbles) so
maybe that will improve things...
>> 
>> Thanks very much,
>> cfr
>> 
>> (And apologies for having so many questions and offering no answers!)
>
> No apology needed for that.  :-)
>
>
> Hope this helps,
>
> 	Ross
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Ross Moore                                       ross.moore at mq.edu.au
> Mathematics Department                           office: E7A-419
> Macquarie University                             tel: +61 (0)2 9850 8955
> Sydney, Australia  2109                          fax: +61 (0)2 9850 8114
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
>