[XeTeX] IPA superscript diacritics

[Khaled Hosny]

On Sat, Nov 06, 2010 at 03:21:49PM -0500, Kevin Russell wrote:
> 
> I'm attaching a LaTeX file and the resulting PDF (from MacTeX2008).
> 
> The problem is that the text:
>     [tʰ] should not be [th], nor [mʲ] like [mj], or [kʷ] like [kw].
> 
> gets treated (copy-and-pasted, screen-read) by the PDF viewers as:
>     [th] should not be [th], nor [mj] like [mj], or [kw] like [kw].
> 
> The Unicode character for IPA diacritic ʰ shouldn't be treated as
> ASCII h in superscript any more than Cyrillic н should be treated as
> ASCII h in small caps.
> 
> After more poking around, the problem seems to be in the PDF viewers
> and I'd guess that XeLaTeX has put the right Unicode characters into
> the file.  Mac Preview claims to find two instances of "[th]" while
> also claiming to find one instance of "[tʰ]", though it fails to
> highlight it.  Adobe Reader claims to find two instances of both
> "[th]" and "[tʰ]", but highlights apparently at random.  Skim finds
> only "[th]".  All three viewers act the same way for a PDF file
> (using Gentium) exported from OpenOffice.

AFAICT the PDF file has the correct unicode character, it is PDF viewers
that are trying to be smart, no idea how to fix that though.

Regards,
 Khaled

-- 
 Khaled Hosny
 Arabic localiser and member of Arabeyes.org team
 Free font developer