[XeTeX] mapping=tex-text and weird ligatures

[James Cloos]

>>>>> "Will" == Will Robertson <wspr81 at gmail.com> writes:

Will> It's easy to type en-dash and em-dash on Mac OS X: option+hyphen
Will> and shift+option+hyphen. This isn't point-scoring or anything,
Will> just to point out that different keyboards and platforms change
Will> what's easy for different people.

I can get them under X11 as well, using <Multi_Key><dash><dash><period>
and <Multi_Key><dash><dash><dash>, but cannot tell the difference
between the – and — glyphs in my editor’s font unless they are side-by-
side, and then only because the endash is incorrectly grid-fit to one
pixel lower than the emdash, for no good reason.  In my terminal’s
font — the same font at a slightly different pixelsize — those two
dashes generate perfectly identical glyphs.

So -- and --- are important conventions in TeX source, to keep it
readable and editable in diverse editors.  (Except, of course, in
verbatim type sections.)

The quotes and inverse ?!s, however, are best stored in the src by the
appropriate utf-8-encoded UCS characters.  Or, even better, avoided in
favour of packages like csquote.

Which leaves the best way to handle apostrophes open.  Allowing ' to be
used as a substitute for ’ is useful as lone as it does not interfere
with using \' for an acute accent.

And, of course, a mode which handles legacy TeX src is also important.

-JimC
-- 
James Cloos <cloos at jhcloos.com>         OpenPGP: 1024D/ED7DAEA6