[XeTeX] Newbie Question: Accessing Glyph

Keith J. Schultz keithjschultz at web.de
Tue Sep 14 11:51:56 CEST 2010


Hi Phillip,

	You are missing a point here.  Or points.
		Does a font have the glyph?
		How to access the glyph?
		What is the easiest way to input the glyph?
		Readability of the input source.

	Even though we have unicode not all font have the
	complete code pages of unicode, so that causes a problem
	in itself!! Second we would 8^2 commands for describing to access
	all. This would be optimal, but who can remember them all and
	readability and input becomes tiresome!!

	I can remember when I started out with TeX and hated having write
	"a for ä on my german keyboard! Then came inputenc. That was nice.
	Got rid of a lot of problems with other styles and packages not working
	well or breaking when you used "a. I still had problems because I was using
	Apple and had to be careful when passing my files to others on PCs. 
	LaTeX could handle the file, but the others could not readily edit the file
	for lack of a editor that could handle MacRoman without converting the file,
	but then the inputenc had to be changed!
	Then there was the problem of different font metrics depending on where
	you got them from! 
	Then there was also, the problem of multiple languages in one text. Boy,
	did the input become cumbersome and unreadable for the no geek LaTeXer.

	Well, unicode and Xe(La)TeX has gotten rid of most of the problems of readability
	and input. 

	Since unicode is so vast and the fonts have become rich, certain things still remain.
	They are not an artifact of TeX nor unicode, but the problem of input method of the
	system you are on and the editor that you use. As far as universal keyboards is concerned
	there are programmable keyboards that have LED-keys show you the glyphs/characters and
	change!! Yet, you still have TO KNOW where to find the glyph. 

	Remember, when you wanted certain characters you had to enter ALT control codes to
	get the character that was not on the keyboard. Well, you can always use key mapping
	and bindings to help. If you have a good editor there is also code substitution or auto-complete
	so that the proper glyph shows up or the proper Xe(La)TeX code.

	Xe(La)TeX, and TeX in general,  is highly complex and flexible you have to have some
	indepth knowledge to use it with ease, comfort and competence. If that knowledge is to hard or cumbersome
	to learn then one should stay with WYSIWYG systems. 

	The people working on Xe(La)Tex have done an excellent job and are working hard to make things
	as easy as possible, yet certain things they can not change or make much easier.

	regards
		Keith.

		

Am 13.09.2010 um 17:46 schrieb Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd):

> 
> 
> Michiel Kamermans wrote:
> 
>> When switching from LaTeX to XeLaTeX, the first thing to realise is that
>> in XeLaTeX, you write your text in unicode, relying on the unicode way
>> of representing characters and character sequences. As such, the best
>> choice is to not "access glyphs" but to just put them directly in your
>> document: just use €, ſ, etc.
> 
> Much as I sympathise with, and understand, this Unicode-oriented
> approach, it seems to me that in real life, and in the absence
> of a universal keyboard which can conveniently and easily be used
> to enter the myriad human languages that Unicode contains, the
> "traditional" TeX way of entering diacritics (and characters
> beyond those found on an English keyboard) is actually by
> far the most useful and usable.  If XeTeX does not currently have
> a macro set which allows all such characters to be conveniently
> entered mnemonically (and \char "0123 doesn't count as mnemonic !),
> then I do think that there is a clear case for its creation.
> 
> Philip Taylor
> 
> 
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