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I'm trying to use the tipa package with fontspec, but they don't play nice together. I've read previous questions trying to solve the issues that come up (like this one), and that's the solution I've been using so far.

However, I've bumped into a problem that I can't really understand. Below I include a (unrealistically brief) MWE taken from the question linked to above. The real document is much more complex, but this illustrates the problem nicely. The following document compiles with no warnings or errors for me:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tipa}
\usepackage{fontspec}

\AtBeginDocument{
  \renewcommand\textipa[2][r]{{\fontfamily{cm#1}\tipaencoding #2}}
}
\renewenvironment{IPA}[1][r]
{\fontfamily{cm#1}\tipaencoding}
{}

\begin{document}
  \textipa{f@"nEtIks}
\end{document}

But adding a line like

\textipa{\~an\~a}

breaks it. What is really puzzling is that compilation halts without any sort of warning, even with -interaction=nonstopmode enabled. In the above example I could simply use \~an\~a, without the tipa environment, but in other cases this is not an option.

I've read the recommendations for linguistics papers, but since all my transcriptions are already typed out using tipa, I'm reluctant to give it up and start doing the charmap spelunking that would be necessary.

Is there a way to use \~ in a tipa environment while still using fontspec?

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jja
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  • Just remove the fontspec line and it will work. – yannisl Feb 26 '13 at 20:58
  • It also works if I don't use \~, but that's the whole point: I need fontspec just as much as I need \~. I find it hard to believe that it is not possible to use both. – jja Feb 26 '13 at 21:12
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    Tex doesn't stop, adding \tracingall shows that \~ gets itself into an infinite loop expanding to a definition that includes itself. Not entirely sure why yet – David Carlisle Feb 26 '13 at 21:26
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    {\fontencoding{OT1}\selectfont\~ a} works although it's a bit less than ideal. – David Carlisle Feb 26 '13 at 21:27
  • @DavidCarlisle, that does work, but it doesn't seem to keep the tipa environment, does it? Because something like \textipa{{\fontencoding{OT1}\selectfont\~ O}na} does not print a nasalised ɔ but an O with a tilde on top. – jja Feb 27 '13 at 12:32
  • @jja Yes I know, It was late and I was just making comments as I spotted things, sorry no answer to post yet, fontspec changes a lot of things and I don't know it well.... – David Carlisle Feb 27 '13 at 13:14

1 Answers1

6

The problem here is xunicode, which as observed in the linked question makes some changes to the tipa system on the assumption that Latin Modern has appropriate glyph coverage. Perhaps the easiest way around this is to prevent xunicode loading at all:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tipa}
\expandafter\def\csname ver@xunicode.sty\endcsname{}
\usepackage{fontspec}

\begin{document}
  \textipa{\~O}
\end{document}

as the tipa mechanism is then left alone. Note that this may break other things: the outcome will very much depend on the real documents involved. (You may need to manually 'restore' parts of xunicode.)

Joseph Wright
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  • It's been some time since I asked this question, so I can't even remember what the eventual solution I used was. But this definitely solves the issue at hand, so I'm going to accept this. And damn the consequences of those things that might get broken! :) – jja Aug 12 '13 at 00:11