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 -----------------------------------------------------------------