[XeTeX] A small tip

[Will Robertson]

Hello,

Don't know how I've used XeTeX for so long without realising the  
following.
Since LaTeX can now handle UTF-8 with the inputenc package, it's  
possible to create a smart em-dash (OPT SHIFT -) that looks good in  
the source document, only has thin spaces surrounding it, and will  
allow line breaks after but not before it:

\documentclass{article}
\def\dash{\unskip\nobreak\thinspace\textemdash\thinspace\ignorespaces}

\expandafter\ifx\csname XeTeXversion\endcsname\relax
   % if pdfLaTeX:
   \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
   \DeclareUnicodeCharacter{2014}{\dash}
\else
   % if XeLaTeX:
   \usepackage{fontspec,xunicode}
   \catcode`\^^^^2014=\active  % or just \catcode`\—=\active
   \let^^^^2014\dash           % or just \let—\dash
   \setromanfont{Georgia}
\fi

\begin{document}
meow — meow
\end{document}

Yay. I should do something similar for real unicode curly quotes and  
Philipp Lehman's great csquotes package...

Will