Hi, using ConTeXt with XeTeX seems to be an nice option for us MacOSX users. But I get always confused with the names for these rich features like Style Option, Ligatures, Variants. I mean: how do I know how many variants and style options a font has and how they and their ligatures etc. want to be called? In plain ConTeXt (for the 255 characters) we can use \showfont[...] and \showcharacters in order to know how to call the specific characters/glyphs. But what about OpenType? Peeking at the LaTeX side of XeTeX, I saw that they have created a packages called fontspec which seems to give better access to all (?) if these options. What about us? Is there help also for XeConTeXt? Thank you, Steffen
Steffen Wolfrum wrote:
Hi,
using ConTeXt with XeTeX seems to be an nice option for us MacOSX users. But I get always confused with the names for these rich features like Style Option, Ligatures, Variants.
I mean: how do I know how many variants and style options a font has and how they and their ligatures etc. want to be called? In plain ConTeXt (for the 255 characters) we can use \showfont[...] and \showcharacters in order to know how to call the specific characters/glyphs. But what about OpenType?
\showfont is limited to unicode's 0-255 slots, but it's functional: \showfont["Book Antiqua"]
Peeking at the LaTeX side of XeTeX, I saw that they have created a packages called fontspec which seems to give better access to all (?) if these options.
What about us? Is there help also for XeConTeXt?
I find that the lcdf typetools are a tremendous help:
otfinfo -f ~/Library/Fonts/WarnockPro-Regular.otf
aalt Access All Alternates c2sc Small Capitals From Capitals case Case-Sensitive Forms cpsp Capital Spacing cswh Contextual Swash dlig Discretionary Ligatures dnom Denominators fina Terminal Forms frac Fractions hist Historical Forms kern Kerning liga Standard Ligatures lnum Lining Figures numr Numerators onum Oldstyle Figures ordn Ordinals ornm Ornaments pnum Proportional Figures salt Stylistic Alternates sinf Scientific Inferiors size Optical Size smcp Small Capitals sups Superscript tnum Tabular Figures zero Slashed Zero and I can test the features with: \showfont["Warnock Pro: +smcp"] Fontspec is an impressive piece of work, but I think it's driven much more by the 'possible' than by requirements. My time constraints (i.e., daughter) won't let me do that sort of exploratory coding anymore. I can try and help out with concrete requests, though. [I feel like a lot of the stuff I've done in this space has been released into a vacuum, and that few people are actually making stuff with OpenType and/or XeConTeXt.] adam -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Adam T. Lindsay, Computing Dept. atl@comp.lancs.ac.uk Lancaster University, InfoLab21 +44(0)1524/510.514 Lancaster, LA1 4WA, UK Fax:+44(0)1524/510.492 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
On 14 Feb 2006, at 12:46, Adam Lindsay wrote:
[I feel like a lot of the stuff I've done in this space has been released into a vacuum, and that few people are actually making stuff with OpenType and/or XeConTeXt.]
Dear Adam, You helped me get XeConTeXt up and running and I have been quietly using it and have great pleasure in doing so. Thank you very much again. I suppose it is, as is the case with a lot of areas, that you don't hear from people until they have a problem. Which brings me to this. I have lost my settings for XeConTeXt during upgrades of TeX/ ConTeXt and have recovered by using the information on the ConTeXtwiki but recently this does not seem to work anymore (or perhaps I have done something stupid). I noticed new advice in a recent e-mail:
On Feb 12, 2006, at 8:49 PM, Steffen Wolfrum wrote:
This is XeTeX, Version 3.141592-2.2-0.99b (Web2C 7.5.3) (WARNING: translate-file "natural.tcx" ignored) ---! /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/web2c/cont-en.fmt was written by pdfetex
^^^^^^^^^^^
That's the problem. If you want both xetex and pdftex, you need to have two different format-files, both called cont-en.fmt. They need to be in two different subdirectories: /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/web2c/pdfetex [for pdfetex] /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/web2c/xetex [for xetex]
Remove the cont-*.fmt files in the .../web2c directory and regenerate the formats with texexec.
but trying this has not worked for me either. In an e-mail Jonathan Kew suggested he might look into creating an installation script for XeTeX and I encouraged him to do so. In the meantime do you know if the procedure for getting XeConTeX up and running has changed and if so what should I do. I have an iMac G5 10.4.4 and the latest TeX using Gerben's installer. There is at least this voice in the vacuum ready to bother you. Thanks, Charlie
participants (3)
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Adam Lindsay -
Charles Doherty -
Steffen Wolfrum