[XeTeX]   in XeTeX

Mike Maxwell maxwell at umiacs.umd.edu
Mon Nov 14 19:15:31 CET 2011


On 11/14/2011 5:38 AM, Zdenek Wagner wrote:
> 2011/11/14 Petr Tomasek<tomasek at etf.cuni.cz>:
>> On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 06:25:08PM +0200, Tobias Schoel wrote:
>>> Am 13.11.2011 18:16, schrieb Philip TAYLOR:
>>> Not in every case. How would you visually differentiate between all the
>>> white space characters (space vs. non-break space, thin space (u2009)
>>> vs. narrow no-break space (u202f), ... ) such that the text remains
>>> readable?
>>
>> Using different color.
>>
> You live in a perfect world where you can do everything with a single
> editor using nice GUI. The world is not yet that perfect.

I'm going to repeat myself, or maybe if I shout I'll be heard?

We are not (at least I am not) suggesting that everyone must use the 
Unicode non-breaking space character, or etc.  What we *are* suggesting 
is that in Xe(La)Tex, we be *allowed* to use those characters, and that 
they have their Unicode-defined semantics, to the extent that makes 
sense in XeTeX.  If because of your editor you prefer to use a '~' in 
your XeTeX files, that's fine, we won't stop you.

If some day you decide to edit my XeLaTeX files, you're welcome to do 
so, just beware of the U+00A0 NBSP characters...not to mention the 
Arabic block characters (including the ones used for Urdu and Pashto), 
and the Bengali block characters, and the Thaana block, and Latin 
supplement blocks, and IPA, and maybe the Devanagari block characters, 
and...  All of which will show up as squares or something in your 
editor, if you don't have a suitable font; and all of which--control 
characters or not--*could* be represented in 8-bit or even 7-bit 
encodings, using macros or some such.  The reason for using XeTeX is so 
I don't *have* to use macros or some funky abbreviation to represent them.

Summary: if XeTeX supports Unicode, then let it support Unicode.
-- 
	Mike Maxwell
	maxwell at umiacs.umd.edu
	"My definition of an interesting universe is
	one that has the capacity to study itself."
         --Stephen Eastmond


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