2

How to handle Cyrillic ymbols with soul package?

\documentclass[a4paper,10pt]{book}
\usepackage{polyglossia}
    \defaultfontfeatures{Ligatures={TeX}}
    \setmainfont{Liberation Serif}
    \setmonofont{Liberation Mono}
    \setmainlanguage{ukrainian}
\usepackage{soulutf8}
\begin{document}
    \mainmatter
    Короткий зміст\par
    Brief content\par
    \so{Короткий зміст}\par
    \so{Brief content}
\end{document}

Compile with

xelatex test.tex

enter image description here

I assume that this is caused by the absence of Cyrillic characters in the internal font used by soul package. It is possible to set this font with \font\SOUL@tt= but I don't know how I can use a font with this command.

I added \tracinglostchars=2 and saw this:

Missing character: There is no К in font ectt1000!
Missing character: There is no о in font ectt1000!
...
Missing character: There is no с in font ectt1000!
Missing character: There is no т in font ectt1000!
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6
  • Is XeLaTeX a hard requirement or would you consider changing to LuaLaTeX? For the latter the excellent lua-ul package handles underlining flawlessly.
    – Skillmon
    Dec 12, 2021 at 18:16
  • And instead of \so you could use \textls provided by the microtype package in LuaTeX.
    – Skillmon
    Dec 12, 2021 at 18:23
  • @Skillmon I use XeTeX because I have a book typeset in XeTeX and I can't easily change to another system.
    – Yola
    Dec 12, 2021 at 18:38
  • Are you sure that LuaTeX doesn't work (the two are similar enough that most things should out of the box)? It should be possible to make soul work for you: You'll have to find a monospaced font that contains all characters you need.
    – Skillmon
    Dec 12, 2021 at 18:46
  • 1
    see here
    – Robert
    Dec 12, 2021 at 18:47

2 Answers 2

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4

You can locally add the LetterSpace feature.

\documentclass[a4paper,10pt]{book}
\usepackage{polyglossia}

%\defaultfontfeatures{Ligatures={TeX}} % not needed
\setmainfont{Liberation Serif}
\setmonofont{Liberation Mono}
\setmainlanguage{ukrainian}

\NewDocumentCommand{\so}{m}{%
  {\addfontfeatures{LetterSpace=10,Ligatures=NoCommon}#1}%
}

\begin{document}

\mainmatter

Короткий зміст

Brief content ffi ffl

\so{Короткий зміст}

\so{Brief content ffi ffl}

Короткий зміст

Brief content ffi ffl

\end{document}

enter image description here

The Ligatures=NoCommon is necessary with fonts having ligatures, as the following example with Libertinus Serif instead of Liberation shows:

enter image description here

Beware that stealing sheep is not considered good practice. 😉

I know that it's common with Cyrillic to letter space also lower case for emphasis, but letter spacing Latin letters is not considered good typography.

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1
  • I'm looking into sources of soul and see \let\so\textso where \textso is defined via \sodef so it has not only \SOUL@soletterskip but also \SOUL@soinnerskip and \SOUL@soouterskip. Seems like I need to know how to convert 3 \sodef parameters into LetterSpace,, maybe WordSpace, something else.
    – Yola
    Dec 13, 2021 at 2:39
2

Using LuaLaTeX and the microtype package you could use \textls instead of \so. If you also need highlighting, underlining or strike through of soul you could instead use the lua-ul package in LuaLaTeX.

\documentclass[a4paper,10pt]{book}
\usepackage[letterspace=200]{microtype}
\usepackage{polyglossia}
    \defaultfontfeatures{Ligatures={TeX}}
    \setmainfont{Liberation Serif}
    \setmonofont{Liberation Mono}
    \setmainlanguage{ukrainian}
\begin{document}
    \mainmatter
    Короткий зміст\par
    Brief content\par
    \textls{Короткий зміст}\par
    \textls{Brief content}
\end{document}

enter image description here

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