display a Roman font in changes.txt when using an Urdu font for the scripture text

Question

I'm preparing a text using the Noto Nastiliq Urdu font. But I need to use a Roman font in the changes.txt edit screen to be able to read my input. Currently it just displays "tofu" boxes. I tried using a Roman font in the Font/Script setting and changing the appropriate style markers to the Urdu font, but PTXprint hung up when I tried to print. Advice?

Answer 1

Presumably the Noto Nastaliq Urdu font doesn't contain any of the basic latin glyphs - hence the tofu boxes. There are two possible solutions:

1. Switch to a Nastaliq font which *does* have Basic latin, for example: software.sil.org/awami/ 

2. Click on the View/Edit... button at the top right, to edit the changes.txt file in your default text editor (Notepad++ is highly recommended), but after doing so, navigate to a different tab (for example to the XeTeX Log tab) so that when Autosave kicks in, it doesn't keep wiping out the changes you made externally. [The other more painful option is to leave it on changes.txt but click the "Refresh" button after you have updated the file outside of PTXprint.]

Comments

Thanks, Mark, for your quick and helpful answer. Great solutions.

Answer 2

We do actually use a fallback font, but don't ship that font, so you are still sunk. I have changed the fallback font to Source Code Pro which we do ship with. It's a monospaced font so either that's a good or bad thing! Look forward to this in your next release.

Of course you could always use Awami Nastaliq for your font (not forgetting to turn on Graphite in the font box). It has Latin in it.