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

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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

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