Fonts & Character Sets ⇒ Kerning and alternate glyphs with Minion Pro

[AleCes]

As I suspected since the beginning, the problem originates from XeLaTex's incapability of handling kerning with alternate glyphs.
Install the package libpango1.0-dev and then run this code:

Code: Select all

pango-view --font="MinionPro 64" --text "Уб" --language=sr

You'll see that kerning is now all right!
Damned XeLaTex!!!

[meho_r]

It's not XeLaTeX's fault only: you said some other fonts work fine. And Minion Pro definitely isn't a perfect font. Just an example: in Scribus prior to 1.5.0 (svn), there are no kerning at all for Minion Pro (as well as many other Adobe's fonts). You may blame Scribus, but why other fonts, like Karmina by Type-Together, or Calluna by exljbris, do have a proper kerning? It's about design.

[AleCes]

But kerning flaws don't appear if I test the combination through Pango! The irony is that other fonts do not have special kerning instructions for the combination we're talking about. While Minion Pro does.

[AleCes]

Up! Any idea on why kerning is bad on Latex but good on Pango???

P.S.
Since the solved icon is inappropriate for this topic, could you please change it to something like a red flag or a question mark, something that conveys the meaning that I'm waiting for someone to rescue me from that quagmire?
Thank you.

[AleCes]

Up! No solution in sight? I really need to sort this out because it prevents me from typesetting decent Serbian documents.
To recap:

• 1) After some hesitations (you remember at some point I thought the problem lay in MinionPro's design flaws) I eventually realized XeTex is the culprit here.
  2) Most probably, XeTex doesn't manage to handle special pair positioning, at least as far as variant glyphs are involved.
  3) Is there a way (a package ) which might allow me to micromanage kerning & pair positioning at low level?

[frabjous]

As for (1) and (2), you'd be more likely to get some kind of helpful response on the xetex mailing list.

As for (3), you'd probably be better off modifying the font files themselves with something like FontForge.

[AleCes]

Thank you frabjous

• 1) & 2), what's the XeTex Mailing List, is it a forum, how do I subscribe to it?
  3) Actually it's through FontForge that I discovered MinionPro has a particular pair positioning for the combination in question U+0423 "CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER U" + U+0431 "CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER BE" (Serbian Localized), which is OK. In fact, it provides me with a good output in PangoView, but does not in XeTex.

[frabjous]

It's an email list-serve. For subscription info, click here.

[AleCes]

OK, I subscribed, now how do can I post my question there?

[frabjous]

I believe you send a message to xetex@tug.org -- but I'm not on the list myself, so I'm not sure. You should have gotten a welcome email when you joined the list explaining this. Surely you don't need to ask for help here, and can figure this out on your own!