Otared Kavian wrote:
Hi Hans, Khaled, and Idris,
If a humble opinion from an ordinary user may be issued, I agree with
Khaled that it would be extremely useful to have some basic default
settings for Arabic fonts, and even more generally for any particular
fonts used for other languages. This would not prevent those specialist
typesetters who want particular features to be turned on, to do so
through appropriate mechanisms.
As a basic user I am frustrated when using mkiv, that most declaration
of features are completely cryptic, and not being a specialist of OTF or
other font specifications, I don't know which features are essential for
writing and typesetting an article in Persian or any language using
Arabic alphabet.
While the following is quite easy to understand and to use in XeConTeXt
%%%%%%%%%
well, it might be easy to understand given that default features are
enabled but on the other hand,. when you want to disable a feature you
need to know what is enabled so in practice you have the same problem
i remember a talk at bachotex about apps dealing with open type where
compatibility problems showed up when the machinery started to support
more features, or started to make relationships between features and
scripts
since tex is supposed to behave in a predictable way, any automatism
should be visible and basically be on user request so the only way to go
is by predefined (and agreed upon) features sets, possible different
defaults per script/language
\everypar={\setbox0=\lastbox \beginR \box0 }
not that user friendly, and it would break much other functionality in
context -)
it is not so easy to figure out how to typeset the same thing in mkiv:
for instance the non specialist has to try several fonts which are
installed on his system before getting a result…
that's why we need an inventory, else it will always be a gamble and
surprise what one will get ... (also feature creep is a problem ... i
really dislike all those documents with funny ancient ligatures that
just show up because they're enables, even if they make no sense any more)
% defining a font for Arabic, Persian
\definefontfeature
[CrypticFeatures]
[analyze=yes,
mode=node,
language=dflt,
script=arab,
aalt=yes,
init=yes,
medi=yes,
fina=yes,
isol=yes,
liga=yes,
mset=yes]
%\font\Faarsi=Scheherazade*CrypticFeatures at 14pt % this does not work
% after trying a few other fonts one finds that the following works:
\font\Faarsi=arabtype*CrypticFeatures at 14pt
that depends on what Scheherazade supports
>mtxrun --script font --list --info --pattern=scheherazade
MtxRun | fontname: scheherazade
MtxRun | fullname: Scheherazade
MtxRun | filename: scheherazaderegot.ttf
MtxRun |
MtxRun | feature: calt, script: arab, language: kur snd urd dflt
MtxRun | feature: ccmp, script: arab, language: kur snd urd dflt
MtxRun | feature: curs, script: arab, language: kur snd urd dflt
MtxRun | feature: fina, script: arab, language: kur snd urd dflt
MtxRun | feature: init, script: arab, language: kur snd urd dflt
MtxRun | feature: mark, script: arab, language: kur snd urd dflt
MtxRun | feature: medi, script: arab, language: kur snd urd dflt
MtxRun | feature: mkmk, script: arab, language: kur snd urd dflt
MtxRun | feature: rlig, script: arab, language: kur snd urd dflt
MtxRun | feature: salt, script: arab, language: kur snd urd dflt
so, it seems to depend on calt but turning on calt by default is *not*
what the ms spec recommends for arabtype
you see the problem?
we need a database and even then agree upon the defaults; when we have
that we can default (per font/script/lang) to a featureset
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
| www.pragma-pod.nl
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