Hello

Well if money is no object try this:

http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus/

Unfortunately I'm too busy emptying my bank account with important things like 
wind-up gramophones....

In case of difficulty, don't forget the third way of communicating with the 
computer - SHOUT.


John



  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Wilfred van Rooijen 
  To: Unicode-based TeX for Mac OS X and other platforms 
  Sent: Tuesday, May 04, 2010 9:11 AM
  Subject: Re: [XeTeX] Em-dash


        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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