Overstriking CJK characters with traditional Chinese tone marks, in xeCJK

Question

Unicode includes twelve special symbols used for indicating tones on CJK characters. Four are traditional in Chinese civilization itself: U+302A: 〪 ("ideographic level tone mark") through U+302D. Another eight were introduced in the mid-nineteenth century by Western missionaries and have been taken up within native Chinese philology: U+A700: ꜀ "modifier letter Chinese tone yin ping" through U+A707.

I am wondering if there is a standard way to use these to overstrike CJK characters in xeCJK. (An additional complication is that I am typesetting vertical text, using the built-in xeCJK option for that.)

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In the minimal working examples below, I've attempted to mark two occurrences of 遺 with the "level" and "departing" tone marks. The marks appear, but not where they're supposed to.

Vertical text for Chinese with this package is supported chiefly by the Simsun font, which doesn't contain the various tone-mark characters. So I have created new CJK font families in order to load fonts that have the characters in question. But those fonts don't support the RawFeature={vertical} option of xeCJK, and that may be part of what's going wrong.

I had hoped perhaps xeCJK might have a built-in tool for marking characters with these traditional marks.

%!TEX TS-program = xelatex
\documentclass{bxjsarticle}
\usepackage{xeCJK}
\setCJKmainfont[Scale=MatchLowercase,Mapping=tex-text,RawFeature={vertical}]{SimSun}
% To get traditional tone marks for ``ideographic tone mark'' (ITM) characters
\newCJKfontfamily\ITMtones{BabelStone Han}
\newCJKfontfamily\ITMtonesA{HAN NOM A}
\newCJKfontfamily\ITMtonesB{Hanazono Mincho A Regular}
\begin{document}
\fontsize{40}{40}\selectfont
BabelStone Han:\vskip1em
誠宜開張聖聽、以光先帝{\ITMtones{〪}}遺德、恢弘志士之氣、不宜妄自菲薄、\dots 是以先帝簡拔以遺{\ITMtones{  〬}}陛下、愚以為、宮中之事、事無大小、悉以咨之\dots
\clearpage
HAN NOM A:\vskip1em
誠宜開張聖聽、以光先帝{\ITMtonesA{〪}}遺德、恢弘志士之氣、不宜妄自菲薄、\dots 是以先帝簡拔以遺{\ITMtonesA{  〬}}陛下、愚以為、宮中之事、事無大小、悉以咨之\dots
\clearpage
Hanazono Mincho A Regular:\vskip1em
誠宜開張聖聽、以光先帝{\ITMtonesB{〪}}遺德、恢弘志士之氣、不宜妄自菲薄、\dots 是以先帝簡拔以遺{\ITMtonesB{  〬}}陛下、愚以為、宮中之事、事無大小、悉以咨之\dots
\end{document}

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Answer 1

Not very good, but a quick and dirty solution using \kern and \raisebox, both tuned manually. In order to avoid font issues, I am using the Roman letter o for the traditional tone-mark circle, instead of the prescribed Unicode characters.

Doing it this way introduces infelicities in both leading and kerning, which I have also tuned manually. The result is still imperfect — among other things, the first line is one character shorter than the rest of the paragraph. I'd be grateful to hear of better solutions.

[In addition to 遺, I have marked both 菲 and 不 here, as they each have alternate píngshēng readings in the philological sources. Here we want their shǎngshēng and rùshēng readings, respectively.]

%!TEX TS-program = xelatex
\documentclass{bxjsarticle}
\usepackage{xeCJK}
\setCJKmainfont[Scale=MatchLowercase,Mapping=tex-text,RawFeature={vertical}]{SimSun}
\usepackage{setspace}  % Provides \setstretch
% To get overstruck ``o'' to represent traditional corner tone marks
% píngshēng 平聲: overstruck circle at lower left corner of character
\newcommand\pyng[1]{#1\kern-14pt{%
 \fontsize{25}{25}\selectfont\textbf{\raisebox{-1.6ex}o}}%
\kern2pt}
% shǎngshēng 上聲: overstruck circle at upper left corner of character
\newcommand\shaang[1]{#1\kern-40pt{%
 \fontsize{25}{25}\selectfont\textbf{\raisebox{-1.6ex}o}}%
\kern27pt}
% qùshēng 去聲: overstruck circle at upper right corner of character
\newcommand\chiuh[1]{#1\kern-40pt{%
 \fontsize{25}{25}\selectfont\textbf{\raisebox{0.6ex}o}}%
\kern27pt}
% rùshēng 入聲: overstruck circle at lower right corner of character
\newcommand\ruh[1]{#1\kern-14pt{%
 \fontsize{25}{25}\selectfont\textbf{\raisebox{0.6ex}o}}{}%
\kern2pt}
\begin{document}
\raggedright      % Reduce kerning distortion (default justified alignment is worse).
\setstretch{1.25} % Reduce leading distortion.
\fontsize{40}{40}\selectfont
Using \texttt{\textbackslash kern} and \texttt{\textbackslash raisebox}, hand-tuned:
誠宜開張聖聽、以光先帝\pyng{遺}德、恢弘志士之氣、\ruh{不}宜妄自\shaang{菲}薄、…是以先帝簡拔以\chiuh{遺}陛下、愚以為、宮中之事、事無大小、悉以咨之…
\end{document}

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With all the other bells and whistles I am using to get the full rotated text and adjusted punctuation marks, the result is tolerable:

I'll put the full code in, for reference by interested hands — I'd still be grateful to see a more elegant solution.

%!TEX TS-program = xelatex
\documentclass{bxjsarticle}
\usepackage{xeCJK}
\setCJKmainfont[Scale=MatchLowercase,Mapping=tex-text,RawFeature={vertical}]{SimSun}
\setCJKfallbackfamilyfont{rm}[Script=CJK,RawFeature={vertical}]{SimSun-ExtB}
% To get IPA font, set as nominally \texttt
\setmonofont[Scale=1,Mapping=tex-text]{Doulos SIL}
% The following adjustments improve kerning.
\usepackage{newunicodechar}
\newunicodechar{。}{\hspace{0pt}。\hspace{0pt}}
\newunicodechar{，}{\hspace{0pt}，\hspace{0pt}}
\newunicodechar{﹐}{\hspace{0pt}﹐\hspace{0pt}}
\newunicodechar{︐}{\hspace{0pt}︐\hspace{0pt}}
\newunicodechar{；}{\hspace{0pt}；\hspace{0pt}}
\newunicodechar{：}{\hspace{0pt}：\hspace{0pt}}
\newunicodechar{、}{\hspace{0pt}、\hspace{0pt}}
\newunicodechar{！}{\hspace{0pt}！\hspace{0pt}}
\newunicodechar{？}{\hspace{0pt}？\hspace{0pt}}
\newunicodechar{（}{\hspace{0pt}（\hspace{0pt}}
\newunicodechar{）}{\hspace{0pt}）\hspace{0pt}}
\newunicodechar{《}{\hspace{0pt}《\hspace{0pt}}
\newunicodechar{》}{\hspace{0pt}》\hspace{0pt}}
\newunicodechar{「}{\hspace{0pt}「\hspace{0pt}}
\newunicodechar{」}{\hspace{0pt}」\hspace{0pt}}
\usepackage{xeCJKfntef} % enable \CJKunderline etc.
\usepackage{setspace}  % enable \setstretch
% Settings for a 90-degree rotated "flowframe" to enable vertical typesetting
% (Following https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/402025/3935)
\usepackage{flowfram}
\newflowframe{\textheight}{\textwidth+2em}{0pt}{\textheight}[mainframe] 
\setflowframe{1}{angle=-90}
% Command to properly align roman characters with Chinese characters:
% (Following https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/402025/3935)
\let\CJKsymbolOrig\CJKsymbol
\let\CJKpunctsymbolOrig\CJKpunctsymbol
\newcommand\CJKmovesymbol[1]{\raise.35em\hbox{\CJKsymbolOrig{#1}}}
\newcommand\CJKmovepunctsymbol[1]{\raise.35em\hbox{\CJKpunctsymbolOrig{#1}}}
\newcommand*\CJKmove{\punctstyle{plain}
  \let\CJKsymbol\CJKmovesymbol
  \let\CJKpunctsymbol\CJKmovepunctsymbol
}
% To get overstruck ``o'' to represent the four traditional corner tone marks
% píngshēng 平聲: overstruck circle at lower left corner of character
\newcommand\pyng[1]{#1\kern-14pt{%
 \fontsize{25}{25}\selectfont\textbf{\raisebox{-.4ex}o}}}%
%\kern2pt}
% shǎngshēng 上聲: overstruck circle at upper left corner of character
\newcommand\shaang[1]{#1\kern-40pt{%
 \fontsize{25}{25}\selectfont\textbf{\raisebox{-.4ex}o}}%
\kern27pt}
% qùshēng 去聲: overstruck circle at upper right corner of character
\newcommand\chiuh[1]{#1\kern-40pt{%
 \fontsize{25}{25}\selectfont\textbf{\raisebox{1.9ex}o}}%
\kern27pt}
% rùshēng 入聲: overstruck circle at lower right corner of character
\newcommand\ruh[1]{#1\kern-14pt{%
 \fontsize{25}{25}\selectfont\textbf{\raisebox{1.9ex}o}}}%
%\kern2pt}
\begin{document}
\CJKmove % Adjusts positioning of Roman font vis-à-vis CJK, and also CJK punctuation
\raggedright        % Makes parskip unnecessary here, more neatly.
\setstretch{1.25} % Reduce leading distortion.
\vspace*{\fill}
\pagenumbering{gobble}          % No page-numbering starting here
\fontsize{40}{40}\selectfont
誠宜開張聖聽、以光先帝\pyng{遺}德、恢弘志士之氣、\ruh{不}宜妄自\shaang{菲}薄、…是以先帝簡拔以\chiuh{遺}陛下、愚以為、宮中之事、事無大小、悉以咨之…
\vspace*{\fill}
\end{document}