[pdftex] problem with margin kerning

Reinhard Kotucha reinhard.kotucha at web.de
Sat Jan 3 21:18:36 CET 2009


Werner LEMBERG writes:
 > 
 > > ! Missing number, treated as zero.
 > > <to be read again>
 > >                    F
 > > �->{\char "F
 > >             7}
 > 
 > Wild guess: Replace the `\char "F7' with `\char "0F7'.  For example, the
 > active doublequote character in german.sty needs such actions.

Hmmm, I suppose that this will work with german.sty only.  The active
doublequote character in german.sty always takes one argument.  Thus,
it can look for a zero and treat the rest as a hexadecimal number.
This is quite german.sty specific.

The best approach is to avoid active doublequotes.  If it's really
necessary to make them active, it makes more sense to avoid
hexadecimal numbers and use decimal numbers instead, i.e \char 247
instead of \char "F7.

Similarly, if there is a need to make single quotes active, avoid
octal numbers.

It's quite interesting how these things are implemented in LaTeX.
Babel makes the doublequotes active temporarily while the control
sequences are assigned to active characters and then restores the
original catcodes.

This means that after babel had been loaded, all the other packages
can use hexadecimal numbers as usual.  The actual catcode change which
makes babel's active doublequotes available happens \AtBeginDocument.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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