Re: Syriac Script

18/10/2005, 10pm - Jonathan Kew wrote:

> On 18 Oct 2005, at 1:51 pm, Will Robertson wrote:
>
> > Anyway, you should be able to get by with turning the contextual  
> > ligatures on manually:
> >
> >   \fontspec[Script=Syriac, Ligatures=Contextual]{Estrangelo Edessa}
> >   ???
>
> I'm afraid that's not going to work, because Syriac shaping depends  
> on assigning different feature tags to letters depending on their  
> position in the word (initial, medial, final, and some additional  
> features). It's not enough to simply turn on a feature (or any  
> fixed set of features) for the entire text run.
>
> So a true Syriac shaping engine, similar to the Arabic one but with  
> a few distinct features of its own, really is needed.

Ah, that's unfortunate. Thanks for the correction.
(Also, how do you happen to know all this stuff? :) )

Will