[XeTeX] Inaccessible glyphs

[Jonathan Kew]

On 13 Feb 2008, at 11:58 am, Andrew Moschou wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I've discovered two great fonts on my computer 'High Tower Text'  
> and its italic by Tobias Frere-Jones (htowert.ttf, htowerti.ttf,  
> available with Microsoft Office I believe). It contains small caps  
> a set of f ligatures and lining figures (old style figures are  
> normal by design) and a few other nice things, however they don't  
> have some mapping (say in Private Use Area or else) and they're not  
> available through OpenType. Hence it seems that these glyphs can't  
> be accessed (easily). The same also applies to 'Californian FB'.  
> These glyphs can be used in InDesign.

How do you use them in InDesign -- by manually locating them in an  
"insert glyph" palette or something?

> Can they be used in Xe(La)TeX?

As they don't seem to be encoded at any (standard or not) character  
code, and there are no OpenType features to access them, the only way  
to use them would be via their glyph numbers, with \XeTeXglyph. It'll  
work, but it's completely font-specific and non-portable. They don't  
even have proper Adobe-conformant glyph names.

My personal recommendation would be to avoid such fonts, and find  
alternatives that comply with current standards (I'm quite surprised  
that Microsoft would be shipping these), but if you really want these  
glyphs then \XeTeXglyph is your friend.

JK