The Unicode tables in TeXmacs

#1

Hi,

I’ve generated a second version of the document displaying all Unicode tables in TeXmacs. It includes many improvements over the previous version, which was released about ten years ago. This new version is based on Unicode 17 and was produced using TeXmacs 2.1.5.

You can find the document here:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/408418871_The_Unicode_tables_in_TeXmacs

Some Unicode blocks are now complete, while others are only partially covered, with some glyphs still missing. Many blocks remain completely empty because no glyphs are currently available for them. The ultimate goal—perhaps an overly ambitious one—is to provide a complete set of Unicode tables.

Producing a fully comprehensive document containing every Unicode glyph is challenging for many reasons. The selected font may not implement the full Unicode 17 standard, the fonts installed on a user’s system may be incomplete, TeXmacs may not be able to load or render a particular font correctly, and there are other technical limitations as well. I’ve done my best with the tools currently available, but if you have any ideas or suggestions for improving the coverage, I’d be very interested to hear them.

Nicolas

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#2

Dear @Nicolas,

thanks for your Unicode tables. This is exactly the kind of reference some TeXmacs users have been desperately missing.

Cheers, Tilda

#3

Thanks @Tilda

I will write, in this section, all the information I have about this subject. May be it is important to recall first the basic:

How to insert an Unicode symbol, for example the letter #428:

  • Copy-Paste from an external document or your browser

  • Type ‘\symbol’ followed by ENTER, and then #428 ENTER
    you will get the letter Ш, Cha in french, or Sha in english, my favorite Cyrillic letter, yes I love cats (chats is pronounced cha) & Dirac combs…

  • Insert -> Session -> Scheme and copy-paste

Scheme] (tree "<#428>")
Ш
Scheme]
  • C-u #428 or M-u or A-u
    If you write beforehand in your “my-init-texmacs.scm” file:
(delayed
  (lazy-keyboard-force)
  (kbd-map
    ("C-u" (insert (make 'symbol)))
    ("M-u" (insert (make 'symbol)))
    ("A-u" (insert (make 'symbol)))))

The default shortcuts are A-q and M-q I think, just try (why “q”, I don’t known)

How can I view the fonts installed on my computer?

Check whether an alphabet is available on your computer

  • The command “fc-list” list available fonts. For example, let us consider the NKo alphabet
$ fc-list | grep NKo
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/noto/NotoSansNKo-Regular.ttf: Noto Sans NKo:style=Regular
1 Like
#4

Dear @Nicolas,

I absolutely agree with you that explanations on how to enter Unicode code points into TeXmacs are needed. Maybe something like the following, which was given to my in a conversation with ChatGPT this morning:

To enter a character from the Unicode tables into TeXmacs, locate the character in the table. The hexadecimal Unicode code point is obtained by concatenating the row label (left margin) with the column label (top margin). After pressing Ctrl+Q , type # followed by this hexadecimal code.

Example: The letter dž (Latin small letter dz with caron) is found at the intersection of row 1C- and column 6 . Hence its Unicode code point is U+01C6 . In TeXmacs, type

Ctrl + Q
#1c6

(uppercase #1C6 works equally well).

There are two details worth emphasizing:

  1. The row label represents the leading hexadecimal digits.
  • Row 1C- means 1Cx .
  • Column 6 supplies the final hexadecimal digit.
  • Together they form 1C6 .
  1. The leading zero is optional.
    Unicode writes the code point as U+01C6 , but TeXmacs accepts

#1c6

as well as

#01c6

Both produce dž .

More over, a sort of Unicode Companion for TeXmacs could answer practical questions such as:

  • How do I read a Unicode table?
  • How do I enter any character in TeXmacs?
  • Which blocks are useful for mathematicians?
  • Which blocks are useful for linguists?
  • Which blocks can usually be ignored?
  • Where are the hidden gems? (letterlike symbols, combining diacritics, mathematical alphabets, arrows, technical symbols, etc.)

Such a companion could become a genuinely useful reference and complement your comprehensive Unicode tables beautifully: the tables provide everything , while the companion explains how to use them effectively. If you feel like it, we could continue discussing this in a private email conversation and collaborate.

Also, I quite like your idea of creating keyboard maps. But for practical editing purposes, I’m not sure if it is a good way to place them in “my-init-texmacs.scm”. I wonder if there is a way to load and unload “init scheme files” the way style files can be loaded or unloaded on demand. Maybe @mgubi, @jeroen or @darcy would know.

Cheers, Tilda

#5

I think that TeXmacs would benefit very strongly from a wiki. I have in mind to set up a Wikibook on https://www.wikibooks.org/, I might have time to do it later this year.

It would be different from both the manual (a wiki can be edited much more quickly than the manual) and from the blog at https://texmacs.github.io/notes/docs/main.html (it would be more structured than the blog).

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#6

I think that you could upload a copy of the tables to https://github.com/texmacs/tm-forge

If @mgubi or @jeroen are hearing, in case you see a pull request from @Nicolas could you please accept it quickly :wink:

#7

@pireddag
I think that TeXmacs would benefit very strongly from a wiki. I have in mind to set up a Wikibook on https://www.wikibooks.org/, I might have time to do it later this year.

I’ve started outlining Unicode for TeXmacs Users: A Practical Guide for Academic Editing Needs along the lines stated above. The first three chapters are already drafted, aided by ChatGPT. I hope to be finishing the remaining nine chapters plus appendices this summer.

If you are interested, dear Giovanni, we could join forces and thus avoid reinventing the wheel, regardless of the publication format.

Cheers, Tilda

#8

I am interested. For the publication format, it could be a wikibook on its own or a part of a larger TeXmacs wikibook. What do you think? I think that if it is a wikibook, it might help to get the wikibook idea started.

#9

Dear Giovanni,

I’ve got to admit that I don’t now enough about wikibooks. In fact, I’ve never consulted one.

The Companion/Guide I’m working on will be approx. 150 A4 pages, typeset in 11pt. I guess, it thus would be too long as part of a larger wikibook on TeXmacs. But certainly the key points could be condensed into a section of the wikibook you have in mind.

If you are still on the email address as back from the days when we were collaborating on the matlab-plugin, we could discuss design questions and procedures in a private email conversation.

Cheers, Tilda

#10

I have shot you a message from my email dress (still the same) to the one address of you I know.

For Wikibooks, here are two examples:
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Scheme_Programming