[texhax] Using XeTeX to select fonts

[Uwe Lück]

Now something about the original posting:

Am Sonntag, den 27.01.2013, 14:21 -0800 schrieb Clint Olsen: 
> I apologize if this isn't the correct forum. 

This is the correct forum for anything about TeX.

> I'm interested in experimenting with TeX and 
> selecting fonts from my Mac. My understanding 
> is that if you don't want the LaTeX macro support, 
> you are supposed to use XeTeX. 

On a Mac, I have never tried TeX. Anyway, the last 
sentence surprises me very much. I believe that even 
on a Mac, you can use Plain TeX or ConTeXt (Mark II) 
with pdfTeX. Or are you saying that pdfTeX doesn't 
work at all on a Mac? Or perhaps you are saying that 
you insist on "Hoefler Text". Be it a Mac or whatever, 
it may need special aptitude to turn an arbitrary 
OpenType font into a font that pdfTeX can process. 

> I found the fontspec article that explains how you 
> do this. 

What fontspec article? I have looked at the fontspec 
documentation. fontspec is a package for LaTeX. 
I cannot find anything in the documentation about 
using any TeX engine without LaTeX.

> I am able to select fonts easily using 
> something of the form:
> 
> \font\hoefler="Hoefler Text"
> \hoefler

Interesting, the quotation marks, especially. 
-- Maybe you have tried to refer to the XeTeX FAQ 
(i.e., confused it with some "fontspec article")

   http://scripts.sil.org/xetex_faq

that indeed mentions the XeTeX version of the Plain format, 
xetex.fmt. Something there may help you -- with your 
rather pioneering research.

Cheers,

    Uwe.