From: r.ermers@hccnet.nl
Subject: Re: (Con)TeX(t), Unicode and accented characters
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 08:56:40 +0100 (MET) [thread overview]
Message-ID: <47395.62.251.0.62.1103615800.squirrel@62.251.0.62> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <41C72FD6.3030807@email.si>
Mojca,
In reply to your question:
> I don't really understand how accented characters are typeset in
> (Con)TeX(t). One of the main reasons for switching to LaTeX (maybe 8
> years ago) someone mentioned was: "You don't have to worry about accented
> characters. You can make any accented character and it will work all over
> the world." (We actually did have lots of problems with MS Word and web
> browsers at that time.) And it was true.
You know that all characters in a font have a number. If you type a, the font mechanism makes sure that you see an a. In reality the font shows you the character that is put on the numerical position of a. In the font dingbats for example, the character on that position is not an a, but a symbol.
In Latex the combination \"{a} can mean two things:
1. in most fonts: show the charachter on the a given numerical position, which means that there is one character ä.
2. in some other fonts \"{a} means: combine " with a and make an ä. This means that " is combined with the character on the numerical position of a. TeX does this very well and thus construes very acceptable diacritical signs like \"{q}, \d{o}, \v{o}, which do not exist in regular fonts.
If you have a font which contains \"{q}, \d{o} or some other special characters, you may instruct TeX not to create the character, but rather to show the contents of a given numerical position in that font. That's what the .enc and .fd files under Latex are for.
That's also the reason there are, or used to be, special fonts for Polish an Czech and other languages: they contain predefined characters in one single numerical position, e.g. \v{s} and \v{c} that TeX does not have to create anew from two signs.
Kind regards,
Robert
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2004-12-21 7:56 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 6+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2004-12-20 20:02 Mojca Miklavec
2004-12-20 20:52 ` Hans Hagen
2004-12-20 21:35 ` Mojca Miklavec
2004-12-20 22:16 ` VnPenguin
2004-12-21 7:56 ` r.ermers [this message]
2004-12-21 10:01 ` Adam Lindsay
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