GNU bug report logs - #30331
Neither Emacs nor Vim nor Nano handle ligature literal insertion well

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Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Andrew Pennebaker <andrew.pennebaker <at> gmail.com>
To: vim_use <at> googlegroups.com, Emacs Bugs <bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org>, 
 Nano Help <help-nano <at> gnu.org>
Subject: Neither Emacs nor Vim nor Nano handle ligature literal insertion well
Date: Fri, 2 Feb 2018 16:31:05 -0600

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

Hello,

I would really like convenient access to ligatures in my word processing
software. Unfortunately, none of the major text editing applications
appears to handle ligatures intelligently: Each of Emacs, Vim, Nano, MS
Word, Google Drive, Libre Office, and InDesign type a dumb "ae" when the
user presses the a and e keyboard keys, whereas historically this sequence
is typically rendered with the ash æ rune.

I am able to work around this limitation in most applications by
configuring TextExpander (macOS, Windows) or autokey (Linux) to match the
keyboard sequence "ae" and replace this with "æ". This allows most UTF-8
compatible graphical software, from Web browsers to document editors, to
correctly insert æ in place of ae. However, traditional text editors
including Emacs, Vim, and Nano are evidently NOT able to handle a literal æ
rune insertion, and tend to raise a generic error message when the text
expander application attempts to insert this key. This may be a result of a
conflict between shell encodings (need UTF-8 everywhere, though I'm
currently typing this with a bare Windows COMSPEC command prompt session).
In any case, it stinks that the user cannot easily insert ligatures into
text editors, so copying & pasting from Wikipedia via the OS clipboard
appears to be one of the more (in)convenient options for accessing
ligatures. We can do better!

-- 
Cheers,
Andrew

[Message part 2 (text/html, inline)]

Message #8 received at 30331 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Alan Third <alan <at> idiocy.org>
To: Andrew Pennebaker <andrew.pennebaker <at> gmail.com>
Cc: 30331 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#30331: Neither Emacs nor Vim nor Nano handle ligature
 literal insertion well
Date: Fri, 2 Feb 2018 23:38:21 +0000

On Fri, Feb 02, 2018 at 04:31:05PM -0600, Andrew Pennebaker wrote:
> I am able to work around this limitation in most applications by
> configuring TextExpander (macOS, Windows) or autokey (Linux) to match the
> keyboard sequence "ae" and replace this with "æ". This allows most UTF-8
> compatible graphical software, from Web browsers to document editors, to
> correctly insert æ in place of ae. However, traditional text editors
> including Emacs, Vim, and Nano are evidently NOT able to handle a literal æ
> rune insertion, and tend to raise a generic error message when the text
> expander application attempts to insert this key.

I’m not sure about the use of TextExpander as I’ve never heard of it
before, but Emacs on macOS can handle the insertion of æ using alt‐’,
but you might need to change the default binding of the alt key
(https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsForMacOS#toc30).

Aside from that Emacs allows you to enter æ using:

    C-x 8 RET LATIN SMALL LETTER AE

It’s a bit of a handful though, I know, but you can enter all sorts of
things:

    ffl fi 🙲

You should be able to configure abbrev-mode to automatically convert
ae to æ. Or maybe prettify symbols mode would do:

    http://www.modernemacs.com/post/prettify-mode/

Proper ligature support is purely a presentation issue, though, and
should happen automatically on software that supports it even if
you’re loading in text written in software that doesn’t.
-- 
Alan Third

Message #11 received at 30331 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Stephen Berman <stephen.berman <at> gmx.net>
To: Alan Third <alan <at> idiocy.org>
Cc: Andrew Pennebaker <andrew.pennebaker <at> gmail.com>, 30331 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#30331: Neither Emacs nor Vim nor Nano handle ligature literal
 insertion well
Date: Sat, 03 Feb 2018 00:58:51 +0100

On Fri, 2 Feb 2018 23:38:21 +0000 Alan Third <alan <at> idiocy.org> wrote:

> On Fri, Feb 02, 2018 at 04:31:05PM -0600, Andrew Pennebaker wrote:
>> I am able to work around this limitation in most applications by
>> configuring TextExpander (macOS, Windows) or autokey (Linux) to match the
>> keyboard sequence "ae" and replace this with "æ". This allows most UTF-8
>> compatible graphical software, from Web browsers to document editors, to
>> correctly insert æ in place of ae. However, traditional text editors
>> including Emacs, Vim, and Nano are evidently NOT able to handle a literal æ
>> rune insertion, and tend to raise a generic error message when the text
>> expander application attempts to insert this key.
>
> I’m not sure about the use of TextExpander as I’ve never heard of it
> before, but Emacs on macOS can handle the insertion of æ using alt‐’,
> but you might need to change the default binding of the alt key
> (https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsForMacOS#toc30).
>
> Aside from that Emacs allows you to enter æ using:
>
>     C-x 8 RET LATIN SMALL LETTER AE
>
> It’s a bit of a handful though, I know, 

A somewhat smaller handful is `C-x RET e6' (mentioned, as is the above
Unicode name method, in the *Help* you get by typing `C-u C-x =' on the
character æ).

>                                         but you can enter all sorts of
> things:
>
>     ffl fi 🙲
>
> You should be able to configure abbrev-mode to automatically convert
> ae to æ. 

You can also do that by using the norwegian-postfix input method
(entered by typing `C-x RET C-\ no TAB p TAB').

Steve Berman

Message #14 received at 30331 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: Andrew Pennebaker <andrew.pennebaker <at> gmail.com>
Cc: vim_use <at> googlegroups.com, help-nano <at> gnu.org, 30331 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#30331: Neither Emacs nor Vim nor Nano handle ligature literal
 insertion well
Date: Sat, 03 Feb 2018 10:45:12 +0200

> From: Andrew Pennebaker <andrew.pennebaker <at> gmail.com>
> Date: Fri, 2 Feb 2018 16:31:05 -0600
> 
> I would really like convenient access to ligatures in my word processing software. Unfortunately, none of the
> major text editing applications appears to handle ligatures intelligently: Each of Emacs, Vim, Nano, MS Word,
> Google Drive, Libre Office, and InDesign type a dumb "ae" when the user presses the a and e keyboard keys,
> whereas historically this sequence is typically rendered with the ash æ rune.

I don't see how any text-based application could do that
automatically, since there are many cases where "ae" needs to be left
as literal 2 characters.  Just a few random examples:

  maestro
  Rafael
  (Joan) Baez

I think the right thing would be to have a special key sequence for
inserting ligatures, since the need for that is somewhat rare,
certainly more rare than the need to insert the characters literally.

Message #17 received at 30331 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Richard Stallman <rms <at> gnu.org>
To: Andrew Pennebaker <andrew.pennebaker <at> gmail.com>
Cc: 30331 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#30331: Neither Emacs nor Vim nor Nano handle ligature literal
 insertion well
Date: Sat, 03 Feb 2018 14:13:12 -0500

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > However, traditional text editors
  > including Emacs, Vim, and Nano are evidently NOT able to handle a literal æ
  > rune insertion, and tend to raise a generic error message when the text
  > expander application attempts to insert this key.

I'd expect that Quail input methods could handle this for Emacs.  They
notice when you enter a' and convert it to á, so they could notice ae
and convert it to æ.

When you want separate a and e, you'd type another e.



-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.

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