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

[Paulo Ney de Souza]

Dear Reinhard,

I guess you did not read my e-mail very carefully, either that or there 
is a barrier of language here. Let me explain some of the points in a 
bit more detail!

Reinhard Kotucha wrote:
> 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.
>   

That in itself will not do it, as explained by Ross Moore in the 
previous mailing in the thread. You need to load "babel" to get the 
right encoding.


>  > 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.
>   

He seems to have - see the next e-mail in the thread!

>  > 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.
>   

I am sorry it is not! Go to the TUG page on pdftex and you will see it 
is the current version of the manual for pdfTeX.

> Use VnTeX instead.  The proper way to write Thanh's name is 
>
>   \def\THANH{H\`an Th\'\ecircumflex{} Th\`anh}
>   

My question is how to write it in UTF-8 and get the proper TeX output.

> 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.
>   

Yes, the fonts have excellent accentuation - very well done!

> 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
>   

Well! "Snap1.gif" is FROM Han's documentation!!!!

Paulo Ney