RE: Open Type trickery [was Re: Encoding and mapping glyphs from an expert font

RE: Open Type trickery [was Re: Encoding and mapping glyphs from an expert font

[Idris Samawi Hamid]

>===== Original Message From "Adam Lindsay" <atl@comp.lancs.ac.uk> =====
>Idris Samawi Hamid said this at Sat, 9 Apr 2005 19:27:21 -0600:

>>While we will still need huge fonts, the processing of complicated accents
>>should be much faster with the approach I have in mind (smaller otp's and
>>ovf's).

>It sounds a bit tricky with the eTeX line, because of the 256-character-
>per-TeX-font limit.

Aleph gives us 64,000-characters/font plus etex so that's not a problem. But 
with some font/otp creativity we can still get some rather small fonts 
(compared to the 10,000-character ovfs I'm using now...)

>Not necessarily impossible, but certainly
>contortionate. I'm led to think about XeTeX--a fair number of people on
>the list are happy with the AAT/OpenType support they get with some very
>sophisticated Arabic fonts.

If you can have one of your friends send me some pdf samples, that would be 
nice. I am especially interested in accent handling over ligatures. OTOH, I 
have yet to see a normal Arabic-script font with a full accent palette plus a 
very complete set of ligatures (except mine of course->) Yes, there are 
certainly some (outrageously expensive) Mac programs that come with really 
beautiful and complete calligraphy Arabic fonts; I'll have to have a look at 
those one day...

>And when you consider the educational price
>of a Mac mini, you're still way below the price of some software
>packages... :)

I'll look into it (Hans made a similar suggestion to me a few days ago), 
though my own goal with my Arabic-script package is platform independence. 
OTOH, aleph has much better bidi/large font/transcription support than 
pdfetex. Maybe I will come to a TeX conference and lobby for integration of 
these two. Then all will be well in the world...

Best
Idris

============================
Professor Idris Samawi Hamid
Department of Philosophy
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523

Re: Open Type trickery [was Re: Encoding and mapping glyphs from an expert font

[Adam Lindsay]

Idris Samawi Hamid said this at Sat, 9 Apr 2005 19:27:21 -0600:

>On Sun, 10 Apr 2005 00:22:31 +0100, Adam Lindsay <atl@comp.lancs.ac.uk>
>wrote:
>
>> But wait, where are you coming from? Are your source fonts really Minion
>> .pfbs, or are they from OpenType? With OpenType, you can use some nice
>> TeXFont stuff to select the features (OSF, SC, alternates) without having
>> to draw from two arbitrary encodings.
>
>I am very interested in the Open Type trickery. I have been wrestling for
>quite some time about the problem of multiple accents over ligatures in
>Arabic. I can do it in Aleph but the present procedure (due originally to
>Yannis) is much too slow and cumbersome, especially when dealing with huge
>fonts (my present virtual ovf has about 10,000 characters!). I finally
>found a solution that OpenType might help with--multiple glyphs for one
>character. I can implement this without OpenType, but OpenType opens the
>possiblity for word searches in Acrobat of Arabic text, something that is
>well-nigh impossible with the usual pfb approach.

I have to admit that last issue is one that I've stepped lightly around.

>While we will still need huge fonts, the processing of complicated accents
>should be much faster with the approach I have in mind (smaller otp's and
>ovf's).

It sounds a bit tricky with the eTeX line, because of the 256-character-
per-TeX-font limit. Not necessarily impossible, but certainly
contortionate. I'm led to think about XeTeX--a fair number of people on
the list are happy with the AAT/OpenType support they get with some very
sophisticated Arabic fonts. And when you consider the educational price
of a Mac mini, you're still way below the price of some software
packages... :)

> Do you think TeXFont can be tweaked to generate ovf's and ofm's as
>well?

From my experience, it's certainly possible. For it to be done, it needs
a confluence of time, motivation, and expertise!
--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 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
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Open Type trickery [was Re: Encoding and mapping glyphs from an expert font

[Idris Samawi Hamid]

On Sun, 10 Apr 2005 00:22:31 +0100, Adam Lindsay <atl@comp.lancs.ac.uk> 
wrote:

> But wait, where are you coming from? Are your source fonts really Minion
> .pfbs, or are they from OpenType? With OpenType, you can use some nice
> TeXFont stuff to select the features (OSF, SC, alternates) without having
> to draw from two arbitrary encodings.

I am very interested in the Open Type trickery. I have been wrestling for 
quite some time about the problem of multiple accents over ligatures in 
Arabic. I can do it in Aleph but the present procedure (due originally to 
Yannis) is much too slow and cumbersome, especially when dealing with huge 
fonts (my present virtual ovf has about 10,000 characters!). I finally 
found a solution that OpenType might help with--multiple glyphs for one 
character. I can implement this without OpenType, but OpenType opens the 
possiblity for word searches in Acrobat of Arabic text, something that is 
well-nigh impossible with the usual pfb approach.

While we will still need huge fonts, the processing of complicated accents 
should be much faster with the approach I have in mind (smaller otp's and 
ovf's). Do you think TeXFont can be tweaked to generate ovf's and ofm's as 
well?

Take care
Idris

-- 
Professor Idris Samawi Hamid
Department of Philosophy
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523