[XeTeX] Tabular figures

[Brian Aydemir]

Thanks everyone for the helpful advice.

Regarding tabular figures: I think the fix I'm looking for is the
following one line change to tabfigures.sty, which I finally managed
to figure out after staring at the file for long enough.

% \newcommand*\Tf at font{\figureversion{tabular}}
\newcommand*\Tf at font{\addfontfeatures{Numbers=Monospaced}}

I'll keep the \newfontfamily trick in mind, but for now, the point is
to avoid as much as possible littering my files with explicit switches
between font families.  Proportional figures by default are great, but
there are a few spots where monospaced/tabular figures are called for.
 The tabfigures package seems to identify those few spots well enough
for my needs.

Regarding the MinionPro package: As I mentioned in my original
message, here's the setup I'm using (abbreviated to its core):

\usepackage[mathlf,onlymath,openg,opticals]{MinionPro}
\usepackage[no-math,quiet]{fontspec}
\usepackage{xunicode,xltxtra}
\setmainfont[Renderer=ICU]{Minion Pro}

This _is_ a strange combination of using a system installed copy of
Minion Pro through fontspec and the LaTeX MinionPro package, but it
seems to work with any problems.  MinionPro/LaTeX gets used for the
math alone, fontspec gets used for the main text.  My copy of
MinionPro was built using the system installed fonts.

If I switch to using mathspec as suggested, text as simple as $\left(
f \right)$ is rendered quite badly: the bottom of the f collides with
the left parenthesis, and the top of the f collides with the right
parenthesis.  I don't think I have the patience to go around inserting
spaces all over the place.

Taking a step back from all this:  I do typeset a fair bit of
mathematics.  My goal is to use one combination of serf/sans
serif/monospaced fonts in both TeX and other programs, e.g., the ones
in which I draw my figures.  These other programs use system installed
OpenType and TrueType fonts.  I can use a tool like otfotfd to make
those fonts usable with pdflatex.  But, the fontspec way of working
with fonts is far more appealing (and sensible) to me, which is why I
looked into it in the first place.

Cheers,
Brian