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

[cfrees at imapmail.org]

On Sat 29th May, 2010 at 11:12, Peter Dyballa seems to have written:

>
> Am 29.05.2010 um 02:26 schrieb <cfrees at imapmail.org> <cfrees at imapmail.org>:
>
>> Skia and Hoefler Text include some missing characters; Venturis gives
>> frankly weird output.
>
> No, it's rather OK. Not available glyphs are substituted with U+FFFF, which, 
> depending on the font's design, can have different shapes.
>
Do you mean that you don't get missing characters when you typeset the
test file? At least not for Skia and Hoefler?
>> 
>> 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?
>
> It can! You've seen it in all fonts you used in your test file.

No. In my output, I get missing character symbols in place of ^W, ^Y
etc. for everything bar Latin Modern. That is, Skia and Hoefler
demonstrate this, too - I assumed because these fonts lack Wcircumflex,
wcircumflex etc.

> The problem 
> with Venturis ADF is that the font does not have combining accents:
>
> 	otfinfo -g 
> /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-dist/fonts/opentype/arkandis/venturis/VenturisADF-Regular.otf 
> | wc -l
> 	     263
> 	otfinfo -g 
> /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-dist/fonts/opentype/arkandis/venturis/VenturisADF-Regular.otf 
> | grep -i combin | wc -l
> 	       0
>
Thanks.
> So you only have the pre-composed glyphs available. LM, Skia, Hoefler, and 
> others are real Unicode fonts and not just a restricted PostScript font file 
> wrapped into OTF clothes with automatically created tables in their pockets 
> with some standard features.
>
Except that the output is wrong even for glyphs which Venturis
definitely does contain. That's why I think there's another problem
here. (e.g. the fi ligature is used instead of "U, copyright in place
of OE and 1/2 in place of copyright etc.) And it isn't even all the
Venturis fonts - only some of them.
>> 
>> 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?)
>
> It tries to avoid it. TFM (not VF) is somehow supported (because it's some 
> TeX), PostScript fonts can also be used. Using both on purpose can be sign of 
> a brain damage: these fonts have no tables which allow typesetting text. They 
> just have the dimensions of the glyphs' boxes and sometimes some kerning 
> information. No way to switch to sub- or superscripts, alternatives, 
> substitutes, ligatures...
>
> Using TFM or PostScript fonts in XeTeX is like using Fred Flintstone's car. 
> (Although its time seems to return.)
>
It isn't that I want to use them - I wanted to be sure XeLaTeX was
*not* attempting to use them in the case of Venturis.

Thanks,
cfr
> --
> Greetings
>
> Pete
>
> A morning without coffee is like something without something else.
>