[XeTeX]   in XeTeX

[Zdenek Wagner]

2011/11/14 Mike Maxwell <maxwell at umiacs.umd.edu>:

>
> I'm going to repeat myself, or maybe if I shout I'll be heard?
>
> We are not (at least I am not) suggesting that everyone must use the Unicode
> non-breaking space character, or etc.  What we *are* suggesting is that in
> Xe(La)Tex, we be *allowed* to use those characters, and that they have their

You are allowed to use them, nothing prevents you. I use them even in
normal 8bit LaTeX. As I wrote, I sometimes process data coming from
databases or converted from MS Word via OpenOffice where these
characters may appear.

> Unicode-defined semantics, to the extent that makes sense in XeTeX.  If
> because of your editor you prefer to use a '~' in your XeTeX files, that's
> fine, we won't stop you.
>
> If some day you decide to edit my XeLaTeX files, you're welcome to do so,
> just beware of the U+00A0 NBSP characters...not to mention the Arabic block
> characters (including the ones used for Urdu and Pashto), and the Bengali
> block characters, and the Thaana block, and Latin supplement blocks, and
> IPA, and maybe the Devanagari block characters, and...  All of which will
> show up as squares or something in your editor, if you don't have a suitable
> font; and all of which--control characters or not--*could* be represented in
> 8-bit or even 7-bit encodings, using macros or some such.  The reason for
> using XeTeX is so I don't *have* to use macros or some funky abbreviation to
> represent them.
>
If I know the language and script, I have the font. I could edit
Hindi, Sanskrit, Marathi, Nepali (all using Devanagari) and Urdu,
maybe even Arabic and Persian but I would not try to edit Malayam,
Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Panjabi, Gujarati although they display well
in my computer. However, I would not like to think, why I have
overful/underful boxes and opening hex editor to see what kind of
space is written between words.

> Summary: if XeTeX supports Unicode, then let it support Unicode.
> --
>        Mike Maxwell
>        maxwell at umiacs.umd.edu
>        "My definition of an interesting universe is
>        one that has the capacity to study itself."
>        --Stephen Eastmond
>



-- 
Zdeněk Wagner
http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz