1

I am using the polyglossia package from a TeXLive 2015 installation on a FreeBSD platform.

Here is the relevant code from my preamble:

% !TEX TS-program = xelatex
% !TEX encoding = UTF-8
\usepackage{xltxtra}
\defaultfontfeatures{Mapping=tex-text,Scale=MatchLowercase}
\setmainfont{Cardo}
\setsansfont{Noto Sans}
\usepackage{polyglossia}
\setdefaultlanguage[variant=american]{english}
\setotherlanguages{greek,hebrew}
% this is a hack in an attempt to get around a polyglossia bug
% read about it here: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/39262/polyglossia-and-minted-the-current-roman-font-does-not-contain-the-hebrew-scri
\let\hebrewfontsf\sffamily

Everything renders fine in my document until I get to this:

\caption{\label{table3}\makebox[5.3in][l]{\texthebrew{דּברה} Forms and Corresponding Usages}}

Which is in the scope of a \table. The caption appears like this in the PDF:

Table 3: ���� Forms and Corresponding Usages

where the question mark symbols are actually empty boxes in my PDF viewer but are supposed to be Hebrew characters as shown in the \texthebrew command.

Elsewhere in the document, there is a caption like this:

\caption{\label{table2}\makebox[5.3in][l]{\textgreek{τάξις} Forms and Corresponding Usages}}

and that renders Greek characters fine:

Table 2: τάξις Forms and Corresponding Usages

For the \caption with the Hebrew word, the transcript shows this:

Missing character: There is no דּ in font Noto Sans Bold/OT:script=latn; language
=DFLT;mapping=tex-text;mapping=tex-text;!
Missing character: There is no ב in font Noto Sans Bold/OT:script=latn;language
=DFLT;mapping=tex-text;mapping=tex-text;!
Missing character: There is no ר in font Noto Sans Bold/OT:script=latn;language
=DFLT;mapping=tex-text;mapping=tex-text;!
Missing character: There is no ה in font Noto Sans Bold/OT:script=latn;language
=DFLT;mapping=tex-text;mapping=tex-text;!

But, if I want to try another font that removes any doubt about bold sans-serif Hebrew characters, adding this line in the preamble:

% \newfontfamily\hebrewfont{Noto Sans Hebrew}

does not fix the problem and ruins the presentation of Hebrew words in locations other than the caption mentioned above.

Any ideas how to fix this?

Thanks.

hilbert
  • 31
  • 2
    When I check here, there are no hebrew characters at all in Noto Sans. Or are you using another font? If so, please point us to where to get it and try to reduce your code to a MWE to make it easier for us to help. – Florian Sep 25 '15 at 05:46
  • Good info, thanks. Switching to "Liberation Sans" fixes the rendering problem. In LibreOffice 5 Writer, I can enter Hebrew characters using "Noto Sans" as the font and bold them. But I suspect this really means Noto Sans family, although Noto Sans Hebrew is available as a separate font selection. Verifying the font glyph table is really the way to go. Issue resolved. – hilbert Sep 25 '15 at 06:54
  • 3
    LibreOffice and other similar text processors will try to "help" you and switch to a fallback font when you try to type characters not available in your chosen font. This might be a font so similar that you will not notice on first glance. – Florian Sep 25 '15 at 07:01

1 Answers1

1

Florian's observation is correct. Changing this:

\setsansfont{Noto Sans}

to this:

\setsansfont{Liberation Sans} % or some other sf font with Hebrew glyphs

Solves the issue.

hilbert
  • 31