[XeTeX] Problems beginning typesetting arabic text

[Tobias Schoel]

Thanks for your help, Zdenek, Kamal and Khaled.

On 26.02.2012 00:01, Khaled Hosny wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 09:49:01PM +0200, Tobias Schoel wrote:
>> Hello to all,
>>
>> finally I have some Arabic text to typeset. Usually I skip the
>> discussion on this list, if non-latin scripts are involved, but now
>> I need your help.
>>
>> The following minimal example:
>>
>> \documentclass{article}
>> \usepackage{fontspec}
>> \setmainfont[Script=Arabic]{Amiri}
>> \setromanfont{TeX Gyre Pagella}
>> \newfontfamily\arabicfont[Script=Arabic]{Amiri}
>> \usepackage{polyglossia}
>> \setmainlanguage{arabic}
>> \setotherlanguage{english}
>>
>> \begin{document}
>> \begin{Arabic}التصرف عند حدوث حريق و اخلاء المدرسة\end{Arabic}
>>
>> \begin{english}Hello, World!\end{english}
>>
>> \end{document}
>>
>> Why do I have to define \arabicfont by myself? Intuitively, this
>> should be done by fontspec if it detects, that the main font Amiri
>> includes the Arabic script. Which it does.
>>
>> If I comment it out, polyglossia complains, that the roman main font
>> (Amiri) does not support Arabic. Which it does.
>>
>> This seems to be a little weird.
>
> \setmainfont and \setromanfont are synonyms (with the former being the
> old and deprecated one, apparently for good reason), so your main font
> is TeX Gyre Pagella. \arabicfont is used by polyglossia inside Aribic
> environment(s), if you want to use the same font for Arabic and English
> you need not to define it (but current version of Amiri lack Latin
> coverage).
So how should I tell fontspec (and polyglossia?) to usually write in 
Arabic using Amiri and only use TeX Gyre Pagella for Latin Script resp. 
English Language?

>
>> Finally, a little question concerning Arabic typesetting in General:
>>
>> The above line in Arabic shall be a headline for instructions, so it
>> should be heavily emphasised. In Latin script, I would typeset it
>> larger and with a bold face. In Arabic, this seems to be wrong as
>> the usual Arabic fonts don't include bold faces. So how is heavy and
>> attention drawing emphasis done in Arabic script?
>
> In traditional Arabic printing, either a larger version of the regular
> typeface will be used or an entirely different typeface, often of
> heavier design and sometimes of different style (e.g. a Riqaa or even
> Nastaliq). Today bold is quite acceptable (but though Amiri have a bold
> font, it is not as polished as the regular one, yet). Someday, I'll have
> an Amiri Display optical variant :)
In my Texlive2011 installation, Amiri is present, but fc-list only lists 
a regular variant and \bfseries doesn't do anything on Amiri.

Cocerning the X Series 2: Why isn't it shipped with Texlive?

bye

Toscho