Intelligent commas
Claudio Beccari
Abstract: The decimal fractional part of a number must be separated from the integer part with a decimal separator. The ISO regulations specify a different sign for different languages; the internal LaTeX mathematical character codes do their best to avoid a simple treatment of the decimal separator. Here we describe a few ways to handle this problem.
Claudio Beccari is a long time LaTeX user and in 1991 wrote a book in Italian with the title "LaTeX — Guida a un sistema di editoria elettronica". Since then he is considered one of the gurus of the Italian TeX Users, even if this fame is totally undeserved. He has contributed several papers to TUGboat; he produced the hyphenation patterns for Italian and Latin, still in use today; he designed the default Greek fonts for use with Babel and supplied the Greek hyphenation patterns (luckily enough the Greek Users produced better patterns and these replaced Claudio's). Presently the Italian language definition file of the Babel package, although under the full control of Johannes Braams, is regularly updated and enriched by Claudio. He has participated in various TeX conferences and is a member of GuIT, the official Group of the Italian TeX Users. He can be reached at claudio dot beccari at gmail dot com.
