[XeTeX] Traditional TeX ligatures once again

[Jonathan Kew]

On 28 Jun 2007, at 10:56 pm, Peter Dyballa wrote:

>
> Am 28.06.2007 um 20:17 schrieb Jonathan Kew:
>
>> Are there any more besides << and >> that are used in one or other
>> of the common font encodings?
>
> Do you remember the Compose key of DEC VT-xyz terminals? Or the
> mode_switch in X11? The idea behind it is to compose a kind of
> complicated character from some basic characters on the keyboard. "y
> would produce ÿ, ^2 would give ² (and _3 I think ₃), O/ gives Ø,
> xx gives × and :- ÷? There are also codes for some Greek letters.
>
> Would it make sense to create an Input Manager to be able to type
> these complicated non-keyboard characters without Character Palette?
> I presume there are a lot more for non-Latin keyboards.

That would be possible, though getting any kind of agreement on what  
is the "appropriate" set of such sequences to support may be  
difficult. A system that allows the user to easily customize them  
would be nice, but that adds a user interface requirement, which  
complicates life for the developer.

Actually, a few years ago I created an Input Method that allows you  
to enter any Unicode character by its name, using "partial auto- 
completion" features to save most of the typing (just enter a letter  
or two to disambiguate when needed). So "&DEV<tab>L<tab>KH;" was  
sufficient to access DEVANAGARI LETTER KHA, for instance. Not  
intended for high-volume typing, but handy when you need a one-off  
character and don't have a "real" way to keyboard it. Maybe I should  
update it to Unicode 5.0 and release it some day.

JK