[XeTeX] Minor problem with kerning in Ezra SIL (Hebrew)

[Jonathan Kew]

On 18 Jan 2005, at 4:53 pm, Robert Voogdgeert wrote:

> Dear XeTeX-users,
>
>
> I'm still experiencing a kerning problem with the OTF, Ezra SIL.
> Although this font does the best job when typesetting Hebrew texts with
> vowel signs and cantilation marks, the kerning of the so-called
> `dagesh-forte' inside specific consonants is not as it should be. The
> same problem occurs when the font is used in TextEdit, so possibly the
> problem is font-related and not xetex-related. But this seemed to be 
> the
> right place to start. Maybe Jonathan knows who I should contact?
>
> I included a minimale example, in which both Ezra SIL and Lucida Grande
> are used.

Hi Robert,

I experimented, and found that if you have a sequence such as
	< BET, SHEVA, DAGESH >
you'll get the poorly-placed dagesh, as you've seen. However, if you 
encode the text as
	< BET, DAGESH, SHEVA >
then the dagesh should appear correctly in relation to the consonant.

Note that these two sequences are defined to be canonically equivalent 
(according to the Unicode standard), and therefore should be completely 
interchangeable; however, Ezra SIL will only render the second version 
properly.

This is a known limitation of the font; see the FAQ page for Ezra SIL.

Jonathan