Unicode character not showing properly

Question

I would like to type a word using Unicode character U+1E17 (Latin small letter e with macron and acute) using the TeX Gyre Pagella font (a clone of Palatino Linotype). However, when I do so the acute accent is too low. Is there a way to rectify this?

Below is a MWE:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{unicode-math}
\setmainfont{TeX Gyre Pagella}
\begin{document}
\textit{\huge{\char"1E17th}} \textsc{\huge{test}}
\end{document}

Edit: I could set Palatino (NOT Palatino Linotype) as the main font, but then I would not be able to use small caps

\documentclass{article}
    \usepackage{unicode-math}
    \setmainfont{Palatino}
    \begin{document}
    \textit{\huge{\char"1E17th}} \textsc{\huge{test}}
    \end{document}

Answer 1

I can not reproduce your output with texlive 2019, I tried your test file with xelatex, lualatex and with minor changes the experimental harflatex with the following results.

xetex

harftex

luatex

Answer 2

The font does not support the U+1E17 character.

HarfBuzz (in XeTeX and HarfTeX), helpfully decompose it into e + combining macron + combining + combining acute (U+0304 and u+0301), which luckily is rendered acceptably by the font (at least the version included in TeX Live 2019).

You can achieve the same effect on other engines (well, LuaTeX with luaotfload) by doing the decomposition manually

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{unicode-math}
\setmainfont{TeX Gyre Pagella}
\begin{document}
\textit{\huge{e\char"0304\char"0301th}} \textsc{\huge{test}}
\end{document}

Alternatively you can keep using TeX Gyre Pagella for smallcaps, and use a different font for the rest of the text:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Palatino}
[
        SmallCapsFont={TeX Gyre Pagella},
        SmallCapsFeatures={Letters=SmallCaps},
]
\begin{document}
\textit{\huge{\char"1E17th}} \textsc{\huge{test}}
\end{document}

Answer 3

Not all Unicode font families feature U+1E17; and, as you've discovered, even some fonts that do say they feature this glyph don't get it quite right.

If you can make do with EB Garamond -- another Garalde -- you should get the correctly rendered glyph in both upright and italic.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{EB Garamond}%{TeX Gyre Pagella}
\begin{document}
\char"1E17th 
\textit{\char"1E17 th}
\end{document}