Hi Stefano, > do you have any advice or pointers to sites explaining how to use margin > kerning in XeTeX? The notes posted by J Kew on the mailing list and on the > XeTeX wiki are way too cryptic for me.
Short answer, yes. As far as I know, it hasn't yet been discussed much in the Interwebs, but there are several resources you can find on it. The place to probably start is the XeTeX Microtypography website: http://xetex.tk/mediawiki/index.php/Microtype_package_%28preliminary_version%29 There, you can download the latest version of the microtype package that enables margin kerning with XeTeX. To get things working correctly, you must use version 2.5 (or newer) of the package. If the manual isn't dated 11/5/2010, then you have the wrong one. The microtype distributed with TeXLive 2010 *will not work.* (And at the moment, xetex microtype is pretty limited. It's only margin kerning. Font expansion doesn't work. Yet.) After download, process the microtype.ins file with xelatex which will create the .sty files you need. xelatex microtype.ins Copy the entire directory to somewhere in your LaTeX path. Run texhash. Once you've installed the newest version of the package, you can enable microtype support by adding: \usepackage{microtype} to your preamble (see the attached sample doc). While it is possible to tweak things, it shouldn't be necessary. In fact, don't. microtype should detect which version of XeTeX you are using and enable the appropriate options. The only time I ran into problems is when I tried to tweak the settings. After that, put together a simple test document (or use mine). To see if things are working correctly, you might want to turn on the showframes option of geometry. (Test document also shows how to do this. PDF output also attached.) Please keep in mind, you must have XeTeX 0.9997.4 or higher installed for margin kerning to work. This version of XeTeX comes with TeX Live 2010. I've been playing with it on my Mac, and it's been pretty stable. As of yet, I have not looked at how hard it would be to get things up and running on Linux or Windows. On another note, in my exuberance yesterday, I might have overstated the stability of LyX, the new version of XeLaTeX and microtype. In my personal experience, it has been very, very stable. But I should probably include the requisite disclaimer: your mileage may vary. If you have any troubles or if something isn't clear, let me know. I'm off work this week to try and get the book done and will be watching the list. Cheers, Rob Attached: 1.) Sample LyX document, showing XeTeX microtype features. Requires TeX Live 2010, beta version of microtype package and beta1 of LyX to compile. 2.) Sample PDF output.
TestDoc-XeTeX.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document
TestDoc-XeTeX.lyx
Description: Binary data
