On 2010-01-14, rgheck wrote:
> On 01/14/2010 11:39 AM, Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
>> rgheck<rgh...@bobjweil.com>  writes:

The input ligature can have unwanted side-effects.

Copy the following into a LyX window:

   To get help, use
   
   # ls --help

Look at the PDF. I copied the text back from xpdf and got:

To get help, use
# ls –help

Trying this out, I get 

ls: Ungültige Option -- e
„ls --help“ gibt weitere Informationen.

>>> As Jurgen said, do you have an example? 

Now, change the command to typewriter font and try again. This time it
helps, as typewriter is one example of a font without this input
ligature. But you also dont get an em-dash even if you mean one.

This is why e.g. Docutils exports "--" as "-{}-".

Why does LyX handle this differently from "~" and "\"?

>>> And, as I've said, the Unicode
>>> version gives the wrong spacing.

In the GUI window or in the output?

Spacing around an em-dash is both a font issue and a typographic one:

In German typography you put spaces around the "Gedankenstrich" (and
use an en-dash): 

  Halbgeviertstrich, länger als das Divis, steht zwischen zwei
  Leerzeichen, außer in Verbindung mit Satzzeichen.
  
  -- typokurz – Einige wichtige typografische Regeln
  
I don't think people writing 

  He came — and went.
  
will use correct spacing when told to use three hypens:

  He came---and went.

spacing is the same.

And if the output is affected, the unicodesymbols file could replace
the em-dash with "\<tiny-space>\textemdash\<tiny-space{}"

>> I think Guenter advocates the use of the unicode character on screen, and
>> --- in latex, using the unicodesymbols file (am I right?).

No. I'd prefer "\textemdash\<invisible breakpoint>" where 
\<invisible breakpoint> is a generic version of the '""' command 

  "" like "-, but producing no hyphen sign (for compund
     words with hyphen, e.g. x-""y).

provided by e.g. the "german" babel option::

  \decl...@shorthand{german}{""}{\hski...@skip}

or (as suggested above) a tiny space (but again, this could interfere
with the fonts), hence my preference is no space.

> If so, then I don't have any major objection, though, as someone said, 
> it is harder to distinguish the two glyphs visually than it is to 
> distinguish -- from ---.

True. But if I mean an em-dash, see "---" and sometimes get this and
sometimes that, this is not WYSIWYM.

Günter

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