[texhax] Unicode Replacement Character in Standard TeX

[Philip Taylor]

Hallo Reinhard --

Reinhard Kotucha wrote:

> as Lars already pointed out, the link points to a very old version of
> Scott's file.  How did you find this file?  Both, Google and Ixquick
> point me to CTAN.

It is top (for me) of the results of this Google search :

	reversed-out text pdflatex
>
> BTW, I don't recommend to use arbitrary search engines anymore in
> order to find solutions for TeX related problems.  You often get bad
> advice.  The by far best place to search is
>
>    http://tex.stackexchange.com
>
> Admittedly, I didn't find Scott's file with the search pattern "latex
> symbol" yet but I only looked at the results briefly.  However, the
> quality of the answers at SX is amazing.

I am afraid that TeX.Stackexchange returns only three results of the 
search string "reversed-out text pdflatex", none of which have anything 
whatsoever to do with the information sought.  I find this is not 
unusual with TeX.Stackexchange, which is one reason why I never use it; 
the other reason is the user-rating system; what is the "best" answer 
for the majority of users (almost all of whom will be LaTeX users, by 
definition) is very rarely the best answer for someone who abhors and 
abjures LaTeX.

> I also can't resist to advertise texdoc.
>
>    texdoc --list symbol

I did try "TeXdoc latex-symbol"; rather like Stack Exchange, it proved 
completely useless.  Had it returned something useful, I would probably 
have cited it in preference to the Microsoft result.

Incidentally :

> BTW, I don't recommend to use arbitrary search engines anymore in
> order to find solutions for TeX related problems.  You often get bad
> advice.

I do not believe that "bad advice" exists; all advice is good -- it is 
up to the enquirer to decided whether or not it is appropriate to 
his/her needs.

> IMO this is a brilliant solution.

Thank you for your kind words.  I was quite pleased with it, too :-)

> However, since LaTeX allows you to
> select a base font size (10pt, 11pt, 12pt) for a particular document,
> it would make sense to load fonts relative to this size (like \tiny
> ... \Huge).  This should work with any base size:
>
>    \def \missing {$\blacklozenge \llap {\hbox {\textcolor {white}
>    {\scriptsize ?}\kern 0,1333 em}}$}
>
> In order to make the macro bullet proof it's necessary to make sure
> that the question mark of Computer Modern is being used.  Question
> marks of other fonts might be smaller or larger.  Maybe commands like
> \fontfamily or so can be used within the macro.

I suspect it would be easier and simpler to make an environmental 
enquiry and then load CMR<whatever> at the most appropriate size.

** Phil.