Hi all,
This seems to be precisely the issue. Xetex can read and understand all unicode
characters, but at this time, the only way to communicate with the computer is
through the keyboard and the mouse. Thus, there will always be issues with
"special characters". I don't know if it exists, and if not it may be
interesting to develop, but a keyboard with LCD keys would be nice. Then one
can switch layout, and the characters on the keys appear differently. Of
course, there would still be strange side-effects, such as a CJK space, which
is really a 2-byte space, and xetex does not treat it as a regular space
(rather, treats it like ~, I suppose).
Cheers,
Wilfred
--- On Tue, 4/5/10, Juan Francisco Fraile Vicente <juanfrancisc...@gmail.com>
wrote:
From: Juan Francisco Fraile Vicente <juanfrancisc...@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [XeTeX] Em-dash
To: "Unicode-based TeX for Mac OS X and other platforms" <xetex@tug.org>
Date: Tuesday, 4 May, 2010, 4:48 PM
Which is that compose key on Linux?
I think all of you have a part of reason, but we have to remember that one of
the best things of the world of TeX is the multiple options that offers.
Erasing that conventions would be a loss.
Although I agree (it's difficult to see --- sometimes and the source code may
result in low readability), XeTeX is everyday more known for linguists that
work with several languages. And the great characteristic of XeTeX is a more
comfortable environment for working with several languages (that it is possible
in LaTeX, but some time ago it was not so easy for some of us if working with
Unicode).
Many people working with documents in several languages have the same problem:
it's necessary to change again and again between language-keyboard. And every
keyboard usually puts diacritical marks, dashes, points and other chars where
the designer wanted/preferred. In this way those methods of LaTeX are very
productive: LaTeX accents, for instance, make much easier to put vocalic
quantities in Latin, or marks for textual criticism in Greek like a point under
a greek letter. These are two examples only, and I agree with some of you that
suggest to learn the keyboard distribution, but sometimes it's more difficult
than it seems (for instance, in Spain we have our own distribution, specially
different because it includes our 'ñ', and if I change to Greek layout on Linux
is really different and few intuitive for Spanish users). I am designing a
layout for Ancient Greek for Spanish keyboard and people who will use it will
have to learn where I put the
em-dash for instance, but if they work with XeTeX and those codes of LaTeX,
this question is independent of the keyboard, the system or the editor, I think.
Sorry if I have made any mistake talking about XeTeX, I will be always a **TeX
learner...
Best regards,
Juan Francisco
2010/5/4 Andrew Moschou <and...@gmail.com>
On Linux, there is the compose key, on Mac, there is the option/alt key, and
both are very convenient. On Windows, there are the alt key codes but these are
very inconvenient, instead you can use the program AllChars
(allchars.zwolnet.com) which imitates the behaviour of the compose key. I use
these methods and have learnt the few combinations that represent the common
unicode characters (dashes and quote marks apart from accented letters).
I would argue that using the proper characters increases readability of the
source code: e.g. J\"urgen Strau\ss{} is harder to read than Jürgen Strauß.
The tricky thing about the various dashes is that, with a monospaced font, it
is hard to work out what sort of dash you are looking at (they're all the same
length).
Andrew
On 4 May 2010 13:15, Wilfred van Rooijen <wvanrooi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
I'd have to somehow input the character directly, and I am sure that there are
ways to do that, but those will not increase readability of the source code :-))
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