[Pkg-fonts-devel] Unicode Font

[Khaled Hosny]

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 04:28:36AM -0300, Rogério Brito wrote:
> Hi there.
> 
> On Jun 18 2012, Khaled Hosny wrote:
> > You can switch fonts in LaTeX as you like, so I don't know what is the
> > problem.
> 
> If I recall correctly, older versions of the TeX engine had a limitation (at
> compile time, but my memory is fuzzy right now) in the number of fonts that
> it could have open at a given moment.
> 
> I'm not really sure if this applies to modern TeX engines, though. Perhaps
> Dirk would be willing to start using xe(la)tex instead?

I'm really confused and not sure what Dirk is after, if it is a
Wikipedia export feature then "one font to rule them all" is really a
bad idea, GNU FreeFont (for example) has such a horrendous Arabic block
that no sane Arabic speaker would ever read text set in it. What he
really needs is some script itemization code in the non-TeX side of his
project and then he can switch fonts per script using Babel or some
other TeX package. And he needs a modern TeX engine anyway, if he wants
to support Arabic or other non-simple scripts in a sane way.  Since he
is not going to export the whole Wikipedia in one document, I don't see
how a font limit (if there is any) would practically be an issue.

> This way, one can use, say, Linux Libertine + Biolinum + Inconsolata (or
> Anonymous Pro) in the document. Or, if one wants a more traditional look,
> then your XITS fonts would be a good bet.
> 
> BTW, Khaled, what do you think of having XITS being in Debian?

I think the font is mature enough to be packaged, well I though it is
ready to be packaged a year ago or so, and asked if there is anything I
can do to make packagers life easier (not on this list) but there don't
seem to be such a huge interest outside TeX world.

> As another aside, whats the status of XITS right now, as compared to
> STIX 1.1? Did they catch up with you, at least in non-right-to-left
> scripts?

XITS incorporates latest glyph changes from STIX 1.1, on Math side the
basic functionality should be comparable, though there are some
mysterious Word crashes/the font not working at all with STIX, and the
way wide accents are implemented does not work correctly with the TeX
engines though they work in Word but it seems to be just a side effect
of Word not following there own "published" spec (it is MS after all).

Regards,
 Khaled