Re: LuaTeX and Unicode Math

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

Aditya Mahajan wrote:
> Hi,
> 
>> While trying to convert some stuff from HTML to PDF (using LuaTeX) I
>> have noticed some minor problems: unicode math characters work OK in
>> text mode (under assumption that the font has them), but not in math
>> mode. In pdfTeX they work OK in both cases. (That behaviour is
>> expected, but not necessary desired.)
> 
> I know about this, and this is one of the main reason that I am still 
> using pdftex for day to day work.  I have become used to typing most 
> of my math in unicode, and now none of it works (with luatex). But I 
> have been too busy to actually try to understand what is happening 
> behind the scences.

we just need to initialize the mappings,and i had no time for that yet,
when done, we can get rid of most existing math definitions

> AFAIK, luatex has not toched on the math handling of tex yet. There 
> are some old ideas on how TeX's math support can be improved, and with 
> luatex that is a real possibility. I am sure that at some stage, once 
> some aspects of the lua functionality are more stable, this will be 
> looked into. It makes sense to finalize mkiv support only after that.

sure, but adding definitions for unicode math is not that complex and
should work ok

>> I would normally say something like
>>   \chardef`φ=\active
>>   \defφ{\phi}
>> to solve the problem, but that doesn't work when doing XML conversion.

indeed, no option

> Actually, for a unicode aware engine it should be the other way around
> 
> \def\phi{φ}
> 
> That is, all definemathcommand be changed to something like
> 
> \definemathcharacter[φ][<font:location>]

well, we can start thinking of virtal fonts; on the other hand, a year
from now we will have math in the tex gyre fonts so maybe it's not worth
the effort

> and so on. But my guess is that this will need a overhaul of the math 
> character encoding. Again, that is something which I do not understand 
> at the moment.

Hans

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                                          Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
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