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I would like to typeset a short, letter-like document using the Zapfino font, with the following twist: I'm OK using Zapfino's "standard" (i.e., Variant 0) glyphs for lowercase letters, but I'd like to use the Variant 1 glyphs for uppercase letters. (In case you're curious, they look more "swash-y" than the Variant 0 uppercase glyphs...) To use a concrete example, I'd like to get

enter image description here

instead of

enter image description here

Note the different appearance of the uppercase letters. As of now, I can only achieve this look using the brute-force approach, viz., by defining the command \newcommand{\varone}[1]{{\fontspec[Variant=1]{Zapfino}#1}} and then encasing each uppercase letter X inside \varone{X}.

I've perused the fontspec manual and found the \newfontfeature command on p. 55, but I can't seem to be able to figure out how to apply this method to my objective, which is to set the font variant separately for uppercase and lowercase letters. Anyone have an idea?

In case it matters, I'm running MacTeX2011 under MacOSX 10.6.8. The Zapfino font I have is the one that comes installed with the OS.

Answer, based on a minimally changed version of @AndreyVihrov's solution below:

    % !TEX TS-program = xelatex
% !TEX encoding = UTF-8
\documentclass[letterpaper]{article}

\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Zapfino}

% Prepare a separate "font" for Latin uppercase letters
\newfontfamily\upfont[Ligatures=TeX,Variant=1]{Zapfino}

\XeTeXinterchartokenstate=1
\newXeTeXintercharclass \uppercaseclass

% Assign the new XeTeX character class to all Latin uppercase letters
\makeatletter
\@tempcnta=`\A
\loop\unless\ifnum\@tempcnta>`\Z
  \XeTeXcharclass \@tempcnta \uppercaseclass
  \advance \@tempcnta by 1
\repeat
\makeatother

% Implement the font change
\XeTeXinterchartoks 0 \uppercaseclass   = {\begingroup\upfont}
\XeTeXinterchartoks \uppercaseclass 0   = {\endgroup}
\XeTeXinterchartoks 255 \uppercaseclass = {\begingroup\upfont}
\XeTeXinterchartoks \uppercaseclass 255 = {\endgroup}

\begin{document}
Once Upon a Time, Prince Charming saw \ldots
\end{document}

enter image description here

Mico
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    I'd use \newcommand{\varone}[1]{{\addfontfeatures{Variant=1}#1}}or, for implementing Andrey's trick, \begingroup\addfontfeatures{Variant=1} instead of a whole \fontspec. You can also consider to define a new font face instead of a font family. – egreg Nov 06 '11 at 17:13
  • @egreg: You're right. – Andrey Vihrov Nov 06 '11 at 17:33
  • @egreg: Please feel free to add a new answer to illustrate how one would a new font face. :-) – Mico Nov 06 '11 at 17:56
  • That's just the \newfontface command of fontspec, that doesn't do all the job of looking for italic and bold face variants. – egreg Nov 06 '11 at 18:55

1 Answers1

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You can make use of the XeTeX character class mechanism, which allows to insert tokens into the input stream based on user-defined character classes. In this case, we define a new class for uppercase letters and prepare code to be inserted before and after these letters:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{fontspec}

% Our font for uppercase letters
\newfontfamily\upfont[Ligatures=TeX,Color=FF0000]{Latin Modern Roman}

\XeTeXinterchartokenstate=1
\newXeTeXintercharclass \uppercaseclass

% Assign the new class to all Latin capital letters
\makeatletter
\@tempcnta=`\A
\loop\unless\ifnum\@tempcnta>`\Z
  \XeTeXcharclass \@tempcnta \uppercaseclass
  \advance \@tempcnta by 1
\repeat
\makeatother

% Setup font change
\XeTeXinterchartoks 0 \uppercaseclass   = {\begingroup\upfont}
\XeTeXinterchartoks \uppercaseclass 0   = {\endgroup}
\XeTeXinterchartoks 255 \uppercaseclass = {\begingroup\upfont}
\XeTeXinterchartoks \uppercaseclass 255 = {\endgroup}

\begin{document}

Once Upon a Time, there was a Beautiful Princess\ldots

\end{document}

enter image description here

The mechanism is described in the XeTeX reference.

Andrey Vihrov
  • 22,325
  • Thanks, this works beautifully! If I understand your code correctly, it operates on all uppercase letters in the entire document, correct? A follow-up question: Is there a way to limit the scope of the font family change-over command to only a part of a document? – Mico Nov 06 '11 at 18:27
  • @Mico: Yes. The simplest way to do that would be to replace \addfontfeatures{Color=FF0000} with a macro that expands to this text, and let this macro to \relax in parts where this output is not desired. Another way would be to copy-paste the loop code and use 0 instead of \uppercaseclass — this would cancel the effect either. – Andrey Vihrov Nov 06 '11 at 20:20
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    BTW, every time \addfontfeature is invoked, it creates a new font definition behind the scenes, and this would slow compilation greatly if used on long portions of text. A more efficient way would be to define a new family upfront using \newfontfamily (or even \newfontface) and use it instead. – خالد حسني Nov 12 '11 at 15:25
  • @KhaledHosny: And I changed it from \newfontfamily originally thinking that it would be better… – Andrey Vihrov Nov 12 '11 at 16:13
  • It can be better in other situations, e.g. if you want to apply the feature to the current font whatever it is. – خالد حسني Nov 12 '11 at 17:52
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    Note that XeTeX version 0.99996 has increased the number of character classes to 4096, so the boundary class, here denoted by 255, should become 4095. – egreg Jun 12 '16 at 16:23
  • This also affects other font families including serif capitals. How can one search only for latin capitals? – Aydin Apr 21 '17 at 07:41