Digital Typography News

We are glad to announce that  issue 22-23 of Eutypon is now available! Happy reading!

On 17, 18 & 19 June 2010 the Department of Design & Multimedia of the
University of Nicosia will be hosting the 4th International Conference
on Typography and Visual Communication (ICTVC) with the general theme
“Lending Grace to Language”.

After three important and successful international meetings (2002,
2004, 2007 / http://www.ictvc.org/) ICTVC moves to Cyprus.
Our new home sits at the crossroads of three continents, a location of
historical significance that far outweighs its small size.
The multicultural character of the island makes Cyprus a perfect location
for a conference that explores the world of typographic design and
visual language.

The Organizing Committee members invite you to contribute your
proposals for a presentation or panel discussion for inclusion in the
programme of the 4th ICTVC.
Abstracts of no more than 200 words and a short bio of 70-100 words,
either in Greek or English, should be submitted by 10 January 2010.
Conference presentations should be up to 30 minutes.

This time ICTVC is organized in collaboration with the Mass Media and
Communication Institute (IMME), Cyprus, and AlterVision, Greece, and
is supported by the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication
at the University of Reading (UK), the Association Typographique
Internationale (ATypI), the Institute of Paper, Printing & Publishing (IP3, UK),
the Greek Graphic Designers Association (EGE) and the Thessaloniki Design Museum.
ICTVC is endorsed by the International Council of Graphic Design Associations (ICOGRADA).

I am really happy to announce that the new issue of Eutypon is available from our web site. Please point your browser to http://www.eutypon.gr/eutypon/e-cont-21.html.
Apostolos Syropoulos

The amscd package adapts the commutative diagram macros of AMS-TeX for use in LaTeX. However, the package cannot be used with XeLaTeX when the unicode-math package is loaded. A workaround is to patch file amscd.sty using the following patch

— amscd.sty.old Κυρ Οκτ 12 19:11:58 2008
+++ amscd.sty Κυρ Οκτ 12 19:11:20 2008
@@ -155,16 +155,16 @@
}% end lowercase
\endgroup
\atdef@ A#1A#2A{\CD@check{A..A..A}{\llap{$\m@th\vcenter{\hbox
- {$\scriptstyle#1$}}$}\Big\uparrow
+ {$\scriptstyle#1$}}$}\Big\myuparrow
\rlap{$\m@th\vcenter{\hbox{$\scriptstyle#2$}}$}&&}}
\atdef@ V#1V#2V{\CD@check{V..V..V}{\llap{$\m@th\vcenter{\hbox
- {$\scriptstyle#1$}}$}\Big\downarrow
+ {$\scriptstyle#1$}}$}\Big\mydownarrow
\rlap{$\m@th\vcenter{\hbox{$\scriptstyle#2$}}$}&&}}
\atdef@={\CD@check={&\enskip\mathrel
{\vbox{\hrule\@width\minCDarrowwidth\vskip2\ex@\hrule\@width
\minCDarrowwidth}}\enskip&}}
-\atdef@|{\CD@check|{\Big\Vert&&}}
-\atdef@\vert{\CD@check\vert{\Big\Vert&&}}
+\atdef@|{\CD@check|{\Big\myVert&&}}
+\atdef@\vert{\CD@check\vert{\Big\myVert&&}}
\atdef@.{\CD@check.{&&}}
\endinput
%%

and then to add the following lines to file unicode-math.tex

\UnicodeMathSymbol{”02193}{\mydownarrow}{\mathopen}{downward arrow}
\UnicodeMathSymbol{”02016}{\myVert}{\mathopen}{double vertical bar}
\UnicodeMathSymbol{”02191}{\myuparrow}{\mathopen}{upward arrow}%

Apostolos Syropoulos

Will Robertson released a new version of the xltxtra package that solves the \verb* and verbatim* problem I mentioned in my previous article (see the documentation of the package for details),

Apostolos Syropoulos

XeLaTeX users you have tried to use the \verb* command and/or the verbatim* environment may have noticed that the OPEN BOX character (graphic for space) is not visilble. To remedy this problem, one has to use a font that includes this character (e.g., the UMTypewriter font) and make a small package with the folliowing code:

\def\@@xobeysp{^^^^2423}
{\catcode`\ =\active%
\gdef\@@vobeyspaces{\catcode`\ \active\let \@@xobeysp}}
\@namedef{verbatim*}{\@verbatim\@@vobeyspaces\@sxverbatim}
%
\def\verb{\relax\ifmmode\hbox\else\leavevmode\null\fi
\bgroup
\verb@eol@error \let\do\@makeother \dospecials
\verbatim@font\@noligs
\@ifstar\@@sverb\@verb}
\def\@@sverb{\@@vobeyspaces \@sverb}

The author of the xltxtra package will include this code in the package.

Apostolos Syropoulos

If you have followed the steps in Generating the XeLaTeX format and xgreek version 2.0 you must remove from your system file hyphen.cfg that is described in Setting up XeLaTeX to typeset Greek documents, or else you might not be able to create the format file.

Apostolos Syropoulos

PS A regular poster to the XeTeX mailing list suggested to mention that in recent distributions everything regarding hyphenation patterns is included. So causal users should upgrade to avoid messing with their system’s configuration.

Now that the symbols inscribed on the Disk of Phaistos are part of Unicode, the idea of creating an OpenType font with all symbols of the disk came quite natural. Practically, the Phaistos font is an OpenType version of the Type 1 phaistos font.

Apostolos Syropoulos

In order to generate a XeLaTeX format file that can handle all possible hyphenation patterns, one has to use the following command

xetex -ini -etex -jobname=xelatex xelatex.ini

where xelatex.ini is properly sets various things (e.g., character codes etc.).

I have uploaded to CTAN a new version of the xgreek package. This version works with the standard XeLaTeX format file. However, it expects a format built with all three different hyphenation patterns for the Greek language. A XeLaTeX format file should be built with language.dat file that should contain at least the following

american ushyphmax.tex
ancientgreek loadhyph-grc.tex
monogreek loadhyph-el-monoton.tex
greek loadhyph-el-polyton.tex
=polygreek

The various loadhyph-xxxx.tex files can be found at following URL

http://tug.ctan.org/tex-archive/language/hyph-utf8/tex/generic/hyph-utf8/loadhyph/

and the actual hyphenation patterns are available from

http://tug.ctan.org/tex-archive/language/hyph-utf8/tex/generic/hyph-utf8/patterns/

To select a language one should use the \setlanguage command. This command takes one argument which the name of a language as specified in the first column of language.dat. Note the greek is not a supported argument. Instead use polygreek. The package includes a new command \atticnum, which transforms its argument (the value of a counter or a number) to the corresponding acrophonic Attic numeral. In the future we plan to make this command to print the date in the Attic calendar, when the ancientgreek is set.

Apostolos Syropoulos