Re: English versus German

In article
<94dd1389-ad77-4692-9a6b-441b2f8e42e4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Jul 2, 11:50 pm, Nathan Sanders <nsand...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article
<b90de218-898c-4f41-8e2c-99d8c8065...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
 "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jul 2, 8:15 pm, Nathan Sanders <nsand...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article
<3598a0f9-7f6d-43ac-9e3b-12d991b6b...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
 "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jul 2, 5:00 pm, Nathan Sanders <nsand...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

No ligatures for fi, fl, ff, ffi, or ffl.

A point gone unrebutted.

Covered by "not the writer's business."

Kerning is terrible.  "Table" has the wrong spacing between T and
a,
and tall italics characters inside parentheses bump into the
right-hand parenthesis.

Another point gone unrebutted.

Covered by "not the writer's business."

We are in a time of ever-increasing self-publishing and demands for
camera-ready copy (more usually, web-ready copy). More and more
writers are doing double duty as their own typesetters.

Fortunately, TeX lets them be typesetters without having to even think
about it. The kerning, ligatures, and leading all work properly, out
of the box, in all but the most unusual cases.

A text in Unicode can be read in any current word processor (except
yours).

I have the latest version of Word.

Your TeX, idiot.

TeX is not a "word processor". It's a typesetting system. A .tex
file can be opened in any program that can read plain text files. I
can even open a .tex file in Word if I wanted to.

Presumably you could also assign a keyboard shortcut to it in Word2003
as well, but I'm not about to wake 2003 up to check.

Of course not.  Waking up any version of Word is a chore!

No; I haven't bothered doing the registry change that allows two
versions to operate on the same computer side by side without having
to "reconfigure" when the one that wasn't last used is opened.

What a shame. I can open two versions of Word at the same time on the
same Mac without fiddling with "registry changes" (whatever those
are!).

But if
your Word doesn't open nearly instantaneously when you click it in
your Start menu [I suppose you have a "Dock" instead] or double-click
a .doc(x) file, then your computer is broken.

"Nearly instantaneously"? It *begins* opening "nearly
instantaneously", but Word is such a resource hog that it takes quite
a while to load when I have my usual other programs already open.

I don't need to "click" anything to open Word; I can open it with my
keyboard: Ctrl+Space, then W, then Return.

I tried it with Times New Roman, too.  Word failed even worse!  The
combining macron shows up as a square block (indicating a missing
symbol).  The combining acute looks fine on "a", but looks terrible on
"m": it's too high, and off-center.

Then you need to update your font. Or maybe your OS isn't compatible
with the latest version of Unicode (that's why I had to switch to
Vista).

The combining diacritics work better in other programs with these
fonts, on this OS. Word is worse. Testing them out in other
applications besides Word:

TNR: the acute is properly centered over the "m". Double combining
diacritics is still broken.

Lucida Grande: m-acute works perfectly, as do double combining
diacritics.

My fonts are fine, my OS is fine. Word is the problem.

Of course it does.  If the combined character doesn't exist in the
font, but is easily created (e.g., by taking an acute accent and
placing it in the correct position over an "m"), then the proper
behavior is to create the character, not change the font for the rest
of the document!

No one using Word2007 in Vista experiences such a problem.

Ah, well, let me drop a grand or two to get a completely brand new
Vista computer running Word 2007, just so I can get the functionality
I already have *for free* in TeX, because that makes total sense.

When TeX can't find the combination, it creates it from scratch, and
the result looks like it belongs with the rest of the text.  When Word
can't find it, it changes the font.

Considering Knuth's talent for typography, I think we can consider
that yet another win for Word. It's its way of telling you you need a
better-supplied font. But it only does that for precomposed characters
(i.e. with Unicode assignment) that are missing from the font in
question.

I don't see how on earth you can think this is a win for Word!

Because I have no problem with diacritixized characters (and,
obviously, I deal with the whole world's) and you do.

Exactly. Even with properly-defined fonts, there are some problems
with diacritics using Word, but there are no problems with diacritics
using TeX. "Some problems" is worse than "no problems", so I don't
see why you think "some problems" counts as a win.

Neither "option+e m" or "m + combining acute" work properly in Word
for any of the expected fonts (default, Times New Roman, various
Lucidas).

"option-e m" is Mac-specific.

I'm on a Mac, so that's to be expected.

Windows doesn't have system-wide
shortcut standards.

Another failing of Windows.

I just tested it -- m + combining-acute gives a proper character in
Times New Roman, and AFAICT there's no precomposed glyph for it in
Unicode, so it seems the typography routines in the Mac OS are faulty.

They work just fine elsewhere in the OS. They fail in Word.

TeX's behavior is far more desirable.

Not to people who care what their output looks like.

I definitely care that my acute accents are properly centered!

Then maybe you should switch to Windows Vista.

Why? I get exactly what I want, with proper kerning, ligatures,
diacritic placement, etc. with TeX. That's the whole point.

Word fails because, in part (as I've already pointed out, and which
you at first denied, but now are implicitly agreeing with), there are
cross-platform issues.

You've gone from saying "Word is better than TeX" to "Word 2007 on
Vista is better than TeX", when one of the key differences in the
comparison is that TeX works on different platforms. You've conceded
the point by moving the goalpost.

If m-acute is a Unicode character, then it's telling you you can't
have that character in that font.

A shame.  Apparently with Word, I can't have that character in any
font!

You can have it in Times New Roman.

Not in Word, I can't.

I'll check a few other fonts ...

Works: Arial, Adobe CJK fonts [they came with CS4], Aharoni,
Helvetica, Tahoma, some (but by no means all) of the romans that are
part of exotics (such as Hebrew and Arabic fonts); all CJK fonts.

Doesn't work: Calibri, Cambria, display fonts generally, Lucida (all
the varieties I have).

A shame. It works with my Lucida Grande everywhere in my OS except in
Word.

Fortunately, TeX let's me have it with any font I want!

Did you test it with, say, Copperplate Gothic?

Just as I don't need to drop a specific physical object to know that
it too will fall with an acceleration of 9.8 m/s/s, I don't need to
test a specific font to know that TeX will get the accent placement
correct. If the font has both an acute accent and an "m" character,
and they have been properly defined by the designer to have the
correct spacing, then TeX will get it right.

read more »-

Maybe.

How convenient that Google gives you an excuse to ignore the
difference in portability between a .tex file and a .docx file. The
first is human-readable on any computer running any operating system
using any plain text reader, while the second is complete gibberish by
any reasonable definition of the word.

Since when does ignoring a point count as rebutting it?

Nathan

--
Nathan Sanders
Linguistics Program
Williams College
http://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders/
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: English versus German
    ... TeX was able to handle this easily before Unicode. ... I don't know of a simple way to get both accents on the same character ... I just put an acute accent over an "m" in Word, ... font from Cambria to MS Reference Sans Serif, and now, everything I ...
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  • Re: English versus German
    ... TeX was able to handle this easily before Unicode. ... I don't know of a simple way to get both accents on the same character ... font from Cambria to MS Reference Sans Serif, and now, everything I ... If the same fonts were installed on both computers, ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: English versus German
    ... TeX was able to handle this easily before Unicode. ... I don't know of a simple way to get both accents on the same character ... font from Cambria to MS Reference Sans Serif, and now, everything I ... And it opens. ...
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  • Re: English versus German
    ... The combining diacritics work better in other programs with these ... behavior is to create the character, not change the font for the rest ... I already have *for free* in TeX, ... But it only does that for precomposed characters ...
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