Fontspec, open type fonts, and lining figures

Question

So here is the problem I have: I am using fontspec and a number of my fonts have lining figure only in the small caps font. So my question is how can I tell XeLaTeX that when it comes to numbers (section numbering, footnotes, ...) to get it from those files? Rather than the regular font file it uses for everything else? Is there a command like \setfigurefont?

Answer 1

It’s probably better to patch the commands that output numbers (alongside punctuation and maybe uppercase letters). It might become tedious to list them all, though, so perhaps you should go for \arabic directly:

\newfontfamily\myLFfont[Numbers=Lining]{fontLF.otf} 
\let\arabicnumber\arabic
\def\arabic{\myLFfont\arabicnumber}

Answer 2

Posting this here so I can include code.

Does this question (especially the second answer) help at all? If you have a setup for LaTeX, it looks like you might be able to combine that with fontspec using something like the code suggested here:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\newfontfamily\unicodefont{Lucida Grande}
\usepackage{mathpazo}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\begin{document}
A legacy \TeX\ font. {\unicodefont A unicode font.}
\end{document}

If the licence allows it, converting the fonts to type1 format and generating support files for LaTeX or pdfLaTeX would likely be easiest since there are no real advantages to using the opentype fonts and XeLaTeX in this situation and doing so just complicates things.

Whether you can convert the fonts themselves to type1 or not, you could do the following:

1. Generate .afm files for the fonts. This will give you something which e.g. fontinst knows how to deal with.
2. Use the instructions in Philipp Lehman's Font Installation Guide but create virtual fonts which take the lining (rather than oldstyle) figures from the small-caps fonts since that's how your files are organised. Tutorial 3 explains how to do this though you will need to read through the earlier tutorials if you are not familiar with fontinst.
3. This will allow you to create the files you need to use virtual fonts containing the lining figures and you can then simply use the appropriate families when typesetting your document.
4. You will want to install the fonts properly for TeX although for testing you can just have everything in your working directory and it should work.

I assume that if you are using XeLaTeX this will let you utilise the lining figures from the opentype sc font together with the regular upper and lower case from the standard upright opentype font. If you are permitted to convert them, creating type1 fonts will give you greater flexibility since you'll be able to use them with regular LaTeX as well.

I understand LuaTeX can create virtual fonts on the fly so you might also look into that possibility although I don't know how that works or if it would offer you an easier solution in this particular case.

You will lose access to any opentype features of the fonts you have. However, from your description of the fonts I suspect that this will lose you little if anything. It doesn't sound as if the fonts have been configured to make use of the features opentype offers and you can't use features the fonts don't have in any case. (If they were constructed with opentype in mind, I'd expect the different styles of figures to be included in the same font and enabled as opentype features. That would make things much easier but is not, unfortunately, what you actually have.)