[Tex/LaTex] Change XeTeX fonts automatically depending on Unicode blocks

cjkfontspecunicodexetex

I would like to move from p(La)TeX (which was a TeX system specifically tailored to Japanese in a pre-Unicode era) to Xe(La)TeX, and I'm having a problem.

In p(La)TeX, Japanese fonts are only used for non-ASCII characters, and ASCII characters are typeset in Computer Modern, or Times, etc just as in the standard TeX.

I would like to have something similar in Xe(La)TeX. In other words, I would like to have Xe(La)TeX to use different fonts depending on Unicode blocks, say CJK Unified Ideographs or Ethiopic or Cuneiform, see the list here.

Is it possible with XeLaTeX and fontspec? Or do I have to hack the source code of XeTeX to do this?

(A very similar question is asked here, but let me ask it here again, hoping that the situation changed in the last six months.)

Best Answer

Just use xeCJK for Japanese. A simple example:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xeCJK}
\setCJKmainfont{MS Mincho} % for \rmfamily
\begin{document}
おはよう VS Good morning
\end{document}

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] A couple of questions about Japanese in Title and Chapter; CJK parameters; best fonts, installing; memoir

While each of your issues can be addressed in detail, I think the easiest solution for you now is to use XeLaTeX. You can then access any Japanese fonts installed on your operating system.

A minimal example:

\documentclass{memoir}

\usepackage{xeCJK}
\setCJKmainfont{Hiragino Mincho Pro}
\setmainfont{Baskerville}

\usepackage[japanese]{babel}
\renewcommand\chaptername{第}
\addtodef{\afterchapternum}{章}{} % Rather an ugly hack

\begin{document}
\tableofcontents
\chapter{手引}
おはようございます！

\begin{figure}[hbt!]
\centering\Large よろしくお願いします。
\caption{はーい}
\end{figure}

\begin{table}[hbt!]
\centering
\begin{tabular}{c c}
\hline
one & 一\\
two & 二\\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\caption{あれ。}
\end{table}

\section{文章}
何これ？

\end{document}

Remember to process the above code with xelatex , not pdflatex.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that there's a japanese localisation file for babel, and it works with XeLaTeX! So you'll get "目次" instead of "Contents" for the ToC heading, etc. You will have to install the japanese package. (Available on TeXLive and hence MacTeX, but not bundled with MikTeX.) However the chapter labels ("Chapter 1") aren't localised, so we'll have to change that ourselves. It takes two commands to do it, since we need the ordinal prefix before the chapter number, and the chapter name after it.

If you prefer to set the localisation strings manually (or if you have problems with \usepackage[japanese]{babel}:

\renewcommand\contentsname{目次}
\renewcommand\figurename{図}
\renewcommand\tablename{表}
...

See section 18.20 (Words and Phrases) in the memoir manual, where there is a list of strings that you can localise by \renewcommanding them.

Alternatively, there is the ptex platform, which is optimised for Japanese typesetting, but I've never tried it out.

[Tex/LaTex] Unicode characters in pdflatex output using hexcode without UTF-8 input

Well in theory you can type your whole text in ascii, you only need to know which octets (8-bit-packets) to use:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{textcomp}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

\begin{document}

Euro (€): ^^e2^^82^^ac

ä: ^^c3^^a4

\end{document}

The main problem is to get the utf8-hex-notation (e282ac) from the unicode name (U+20AC). In theory it can be calculated (and inputenc is doing it when processing \DeclareUnicodeCharacter{20AC}{\texteuro}) but I don't know a simple way to use the inputenc commands to get the values.

This input notation should work with the cjk-package (with utf8-option) too.

With the ucs-package (loaded when you use the option utf8x) you can use the command \unichar. But you should be aware that ucs can clash with some packages, e.g. it is mentioned in the biblatex list of incompatible packages.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{textcomp}
\usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}

\begin{document}
\unichar{"00E4}
\unichar{"20AC}
\end{document}

I have no idea if it would work together with cjk.

cjk offers also some text commands to enter symbols, e.g. \Li4 \chun1. but I don't know if this covers your symbols too.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] A couple of questions about Japanese in Title and Chapter; CJK parameters; best fonts, installing; memoir

[Tex/LaTex] Unicode characters in pdflatex output using hexcode without UTF-8 input

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