[pdftex] typesetting Hàn Thế Thành's name in pdfTeX

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 26 March 2009 Paulo Ney de Souza wrote:

 > Is it possible to typeset Hàn Thế Thành name using full UTF-8 input in 
 > pdfTeX, that is, without gimmicks in the accent on the letter "e" ?

In LaTeX you can simply say

  \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} 

and use UTF-8 in your document.

 > I can see that his name is not properly accented in some of the original 
 > documentation written by himself:

I doubt that it's written by himself.

 > and that some other documentation:
 > 
 >       http://sarovar.org/docman/view.php/106/64/pdftex-a.pdf.pdf
 >     
 > barely accentuates it properly:
 > 
 >      \def\THANH{H\`an Th\^e\llap{\raise 0.5ex\hbox{\'{}}} Th\`anh}

I think that the Vietnamese stuff on Sarovar is completely obsolete.
Use VnTeX instead.  The proper way to write Thanh's name is 

  \def\THANH{H\`an Th\'\ecircumflex{} Th\`anh}

See also:

  http://ctan.org/tex-archive/language/vietnamese/vntex/doc/generic/vntex/vn-min.pdf

 > The rules of accentuation in Vietnamese say the marks are supposed to be 
 > vertically centered, on top of each other - which is definitely not the 
 > case in the macro above...
 > 
 >      http://pjm.math.berkeley.edu/users/paulo/Snap1.gif

You certainly mean *horizontally* centered.  No no no, accents in
Vienamese are ***never*** horizontally centered.  The macro you
mention provides reasonable output.  Please consult:

  http://vntex.sf.net/fonts/samples/vnr-sample.pdf 

The vnr fonts had been created by Thanh himself.  Regard them as a
reference.

I had been in Viet Nam twice and as a long-standing TeX user I have
open eyes for these little details.  I've never seen that Vietnamse
place accents as in "Snap1.gif".

Regards,
  Reinhard

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