[XeTeX] Question about polyglossia and babel

[Vladimir Lomov]

** Vadim Radionov [2010-05-31 14:35:21 +0400]:

> Vladimir,

> You know, that Russian babel short-hands do slightly more than just insert a
> glyph from the font: they adjust the spacing around the em-dash (and the
> length of the dash, too), and allow hyphenation of adjacent words (in case
> of hyphens).  So even in the case of Unicode input we need some macros to do
> this job.

As first aprroach I copied from 'russianb.ldf' definitions and put them
into 'gloss-russian.ldf' (could be found on github.com/vp1981/polyglossia,
branch alph_unif). Also there is a test file that I use to check that commands
work but didn't check that they give exactly the same output as babel.

Correct me if I'm wrong but any OTF font (except from ParaType?)
gives European/American en/em dashes so there is no way to get en/em
dashes as Russian type rules recommend except these commands?
(I thought about to get them using fontspec commands).

-- 
The true Southern watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be mentioned with
commoner things.  It is chief of the world's luxuries, king by the grace of God
over all the fruits of the earth.  When one has tasted it, he knows what the
angels eat.  It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve took; we know it because
she repented.
		-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"