[xep-support] Language support

[Eliot Kimber]

Richard Vincent wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> I have been asked whether it is possible to publish XML to PDF in a variety
> of different languages. I know that XEP cannot properly manage THAI, but
> does anyone have any experience of the following languages?
> 
> BULGARIAN
> FARSI
> HINDI
> HEBREW
> SESOTHO
> ZULU

Sesotho and Zulu are both latin-based languages and should be supported 
fine, modulo hyphenation (which is always an open question irrespective 
of support for the writing system involved). Bulgarian is a Cyrillic 
language and should be handled fine by XEP. I use Omniglot as a source 
for this sort of research: http://www.omniglot.com

We've found in trying to produce Hindi (Devanagari script) with XSL 
Formatter that it is challenging and I would be surprised (but 
pleasantly) if XEP can handle it. The problem we ran into with XSL 
Formatter was that only the Windows printing APIs properly supported 
Hindi glyph composition, which is somewhat similar to Thai (although not 
quite as challenging). This means that for Hindi we can only produce it 
on Windows and only by printing through the Acrobat printer (or by 
printing to PostScript and then distilling).

I did a quick test using a Hindi FO instance and the Mangal Windows font 
and got the same unusable result we get with XSL Formatter when using 
their direct-to-PDF option: some glyphs are not correctly composed.

Cheers,

E.

-- 
W. Eliot Kimber
Professional Services
Innodata Isogen
9390 Research Blvd, #410
Austin, TX 78759
(512) 372-8155

ekimber at innodata-isogen.com
www.innodata-isogen.com

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