Dear Stavros,
Dear Jesper,
Dear Colleagues,
Many thanks, Stavros, for your message below and the
valuable information about Unicode TeX. Surely, finally,
Unicode will be the solution for TeX in all languages exactly
as has been already the case in Maxima with Jesper's recent
work in CLISP.
Some time I had asked the developers of Y&Y TeX I am
using about such an extension and I was told that TeX is
hardwired to 256 characters. In any case, I agree with you,
I have to investigate the possibility of using Omega or the
other Unicode LaTeX system you mention and I hope to
be able to report to you my findings in the future. On the
other hand, I would be grateful for any comment on this
possibility by a colleague who has already used (or just tried
to use) it in TeX.
For the moment, I must state that it is not my intention to use
special TeX fonts such as those possibly already available in
Omega. This is of no interest to me. My interest is to use the
standard fonts distributed with Windows (such as Arial, Times
and Courier) without changes neither re-encodings. This is
already done in Maxima (with Courier I mean, a monospaced
font). Do you have any comment on this policy of mine, i.e. to
use standard and not special fonts in TeX (for text I mean,
for symbols I am also using special fonts)?
Let me, please, return to Maxima (without the Greek support),
the standard Maxima, where I have just observed the same
strange behaviour (for me I mean strange, not for the experts
such as you and the colleagues) with the standard Maxima
encoding: cp1252, more explicitly, at least in Windows I am
unable to use any multi-character symbol with a Western
European character (above 128 I mean) and a second such
character or an ordinary character (below 128 I mean) or a
number. Everything is rejected by Maxima (I mean XMaxima too).
The comment in the screen is simply:
Incorrect syntax: (the character is here) is not an infix operator
and it appears repeatedly for every such European character
in a multi-character symbol.
Therefore, this problem is standard in Maxima, perhaps in LISP
too. Do you know, please, a solution to this problem? In TeX
it has been simple for me to assume the Greek characters as
being symbols too and I work with them, but in Maxima I do
not know and I need help, for the standard distribution I mean
(not for the Greek modification). Did you or some colleague
had ever used a two-character (or more characters) or a
character and a number symbol in Maxima the characters
referring to the Western European (accented, etc.) characters
above 128? (Or just an accented charcter and an ordinary
English character in the same symbol or command?) An
example of this situation could be a new Maxima command
in a Western European language with a word in this language
(including an accented, etc. character). I believe this should
have been at least attempted so far and, possibly, succeeded,
but I doubt.
I would be extremely thankful for a reply and help in this
situation with standard Maxima (i.e. to avoid getting the above
error in Maxima and work with such symbols in Maxima).
Naturally, for strings, everything is O.K.
Many sincere thanks in advance!
Many thanks for your prompt reply, Stavros. Your comments
are always interesting particularly and welcome. Please, also
be so kind to forgive me with my questions for simple matters
in Maxima (such as the above question on avoiding the afore-
mentioned Maxima error). Perhaps, avoiding this error is a simple
matter, perhaps it is really impossible. I have resolved this problem
in TeX long ago, also in Maxima for single characters, exactly as
is the case in Jesper's so interesting screen shot, but (as far as I am
concerned) for Greek only, not multilingual, Jesper succeeded in
this difficult case, but now I am interested to do the same in the
above multi-character situation in Maxima. I understand, perhaps
this might be simply impossible in Maxima because of LISP
restrictions.
I would be thankful to you, to Jesper and to the colleagues for
any comment on the above error in Maxima (in the standard
distribution I repeat, not the Greek modification, which works
similarly).
Many thanks again and best regards from Patras,
Nikos
> --- "Stavros Macrakis" <stavros.macrakis@verizon.net> wrote:
> > Is there any Unicode TeX already ready and working
>
> A Web search finds the following. I have zero experience with either of
> them, but you might want to look into them and report back to us what
> you find out....
>
> Omega and Lambda are Unicode versions of TeX and LaTeX (note annoying
> use of case sensitivity :-) ) http://omega.cse.unsw.edu.au:8080/
>
> There is "Unicode support for LaTeX" by Dominique Unruh
> (dominique@unruh.de). URL: http://www.unruh.de/DniQ/latex/unicode/
> (there is a bug on this page which makes it not render correctly in
> Internet Explorer -- you can go to the directory
> http://www.unruh.de/DniQ/latex/unicode/content/ in that case).