On Wednesday, 18. July 2001 15:42, Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
> It seems to me that the proper LaTeX construct to use:
>
> * german/babel use "|, defined as
> \declare@shorthand{german}{"|}{%
> \textormath{\penalty\@M\discretionary{-}{}{\kern.03em}%
> \allowhyphens}{}}
>
> * the normal latex thing seems to be \textcompwordmark, defined as
> \DeclareTextCommandDefault{\textcompwordmark}{\leavevmode\kern\z@}
I searched the web a little bit for this, and here's the result from
several TeX-relatet mailinglists (just to confirm your thoughts):
- \textcompwordmark is indeed the one and only correct
ligature-disabling feature. Things like \/ and {} *will not work in
some cases*, they are workarounds, but nobody recommends it (note that
{} is recommended in the TeX book, which was explicitely called an
"error" several times in the mailing lists).
- "| is the second proper solution, but only for german.sty, as you
know.
=> I can't prove this, but the explanation for this language-specific
simple solution is that ligatures occur in the german language much
more often than in other languages, e.g. english (the only thing I can
say is that ligatures occur indeed very often in the german language).
> I would normally use the second one, but I suspect that:
>
> 1/ german people will jump at me because their .tex files have become
> so wordy
>
> 2/ german people will jump at me because the two do not have the same
> semantics
>
> So, could I have some feedback on this?
Let me speak as *one* german user: I do not matter how you do it, just
_do_it, please. Even if I like the "|-solution more as a german user
(because it is simpler), I would vote for the latter, because it's
easier for you to implement and consistent. So I will not jump on you
;-)
Thanks,
Jürgen.
> JMarc
