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nLab > nLab Technical Matters: entering unicode

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    • CommentRowNumber1.
    • CommentAuthorMike Shulman
    • CommentTimeMar 12th 2010

    Perhaps we should revisit our naming convention that page titles should be only ASCII. Zoran has a reasonable point in the query box at Cech methods. It does seem as though anyone using a browser modern enough to display all the MathML and SVG should also be able to see Unicode. And being able to put \infty and \omega in page titles would also be nice.

    The main thing holding me back is the ease (or lack thereof) of typing Unicode characters. I have still not found easy documentation telling me how to get SCIM working, so the only way I can type Unicode characters is to use an input method in Emacs. Moreover, neither of those will work when I'm away from my personal computer and using a public machine. I really don't want to have to run the "character map" application and page through it looking for the \infty symbol every time I want to type "\infty-category".

    But I just started wondering -- Jacques has found this new amazing SVG editor that runs in the browser. Shouldn't there be some in-the-browser script available which would make it easy to enter Unicode characters in a textarea? A bit of googling didn't find one, but I didn't really know what words I should be searching for. Something like how in Emacs, with the 'tex' input method turned on, I can just type "\infty" and the \infty symbol appears. Any ideas?

    • CommentRowNumber2.
    • CommentAuthorTobyBartels
    • CommentTimeMar 13th 2010
    • (edited Mar 13th 2010)

    For revisiting the convention, see this recent discussion.

    For any easy in-the-browser method of entering unusual characters, … I don't know either, but that would be awesome.

    • CommentRowNumber3.
    • CommentAuthorEric
    • CommentTimeMar 13th 2010

    We could create a page unicode which contains most common unicode characters we would ever need so that you can simply "Copy and Paste". Most of the time, if you are working on a page where unicode might come in handy, there is already a unicode sample in the same page that you can copy. That is what I did when I was going around adding \infty all over the place. If we had one page full of unicode, it would make copying and pasting easier.

    Just a thought...

    • CommentRowNumber4.
    • CommentAuthorMike Shulman
    • CommentTimeMar 13th 2010

    Thanks Toby, I knew there had been some discussion very recently but I couldn't find it. Of course, it was in "Organization" rather than "Technical!" I agree with the points you made there about the reasons for sticking with ASCII page names. I feel like something of the sort I'm hoping for would be sufficient to solve that, but I can't think of much else that would really be sufficient, to my mind. Copy-and-paste is too inconvenient for me.

    Just brainstorming... what would people think about enforcing the ascii naming convention only for nonexistent pages? Since existent pages can be redirected, it doesn't seem as though having the "correct" name for the actual page is as bad there. And once a page is created, it can then be renamed by someone who can type unicode and have the ascii title redirected to it (or if the person creating it can type the correct characters, then they can just create it with the right name in the first place, and with a redirect for the ascii name). Kind of like how we can use links like [[categories]] for existing pages that have redirects, but for nonexistent pages we are supposed to write [[category|categories]] or [[group]]s so that if someone creates the page from that link, it will have the correct name. Only not quite the same. But maybe that would be too complicated a convention for people to remember?

    • CommentRowNumber5.
    • CommentAuthorIan_Durham
    • CommentTimeMar 13th 2010
    I know on Macs that you can enter some special characters (including Unicode) directly from the keyboard (I do it all the time to impress people :-)). But this would be really great if we could do this for page-naming, though. Writing oo for infinity looks funny.
    • CommentRowNumber6.
    • CommentAuthorTobyBartels
    • CommentTimeMar 14th 2010
    • (edited Mar 14th 2010)

    Mike, I have copied your brainstorm to the other thread and replied to it there.

    • CommentRowNumber7.
    • CommentAuthorTobyBartels
    • CommentTimeMar 14th 2010
    • (edited Mar 14th 2010)

    Eric, I think that's a great idea. It's not really about Unicode as such, so I would name the page special characters. We can start by copying things from itex2MML (ericforgy).

    Edit: I just did that.

    • CommentRowNumber8.
    • CommentAuthorAndrew Stacey
    • CommentTimeMar 15th 2010

    Jason Blevins has a fairly comprehensive list of what itex can produce over at xbeta. As his stuff is GPL'd we can copy it over (providing that page is officially GPL'd for us as well - we really must clarify our position on licenses) to the nlab. For now, I've added the link to his site to the special characters page.

    As far as I can see, the only reason to copy it over rather than just link is to ensure that we always have a copy.

    • CommentRowNumber9.
    • CommentAuthorAndrew Stacey
    • CommentTimeMar 15th 2010

    Slow afternoon ...

    http://www.math.ntnu.no/~stacey/code/latexToUTF/utf.php

    Currently accepts: single latex commands, either of the type that produces an accent (like \'e) or that produces a symbol (doesn't distinguish between mathematics and text modes). Accents work as \v{C} or without the curly braces if the command is punctuation (so \^c works). The results are produced as named entities which your browser should convert to unicode for cut-and-pasting. It shouldn't be hard to make it produce unicode natively if desired.

    (cross-posted from the 'accents in titles' thread)

    Added on cross-posting: point being that we all probably know how to produced these funny characters in LaTeX, it's getting them into unicode that causes the havoc.

    Also, I expect I've missed loads and I haven't tested it much to see whether it works on any browser (doubt it) or if all the symbols are encoded correctly. If it's useful, I'll do that but I'd like to know whether or not it's useful first.

    • CommentRowNumber10.
    • CommentAuthorTobyBartels
    • CommentTimeSep 19th 2011

    Hi Mike, I recently reinstalled Ubuntu on my computer, so I paid attention to what I needed to make SCIM work. Here it is:

    • install scim-bridge-agent
    • install scim-tables-additional (which includes LaTeX) and possibly other scim modules
    • run (from the command line) im-switch and select scim-bridge
    • run scim-setup -> Global Setup -> Trigger and choose something sensible (like Ctrl-‘)
    • open a text interface (like the terminal that you’ve been running these commands in) and hit Ctrl-‘ (or whatever)
    • in the lower right corner of the screen, where it says Amharic, select Other -> Latex
    • test
    • hit Ctrl-‘ again to return to normal input
    • CommentRowNumber11.
    • CommentAuthorMike Shulman
    • CommentTimeOct 4th 2011

    Thanks, Toby. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work for me: I can follow your first 4 steps, but then when I hit Ctrl-‘ nothing happens.

    • CommentRowNumber12.
    • CommentAuthorTobyBartels
    • CommentTimeOct 4th 2011
    • (edited Oct 4th 2011)

    Were you able to select Ctrl-‘ as a Trigger? (It is not very user friendly. I think that you have to explicitly Add it or something to do this.)

    • CommentRowNumber13.
    • CommentAuthorMike Shulman
    • CommentTimeOct 4th 2011

    Yes, I was.

    • CommentRowNumber14.
    • CommentAuthorTobyBartels
    • CommentTimeOct 8th 2011
    • (edited Oct 8th 2011)

    OK, here is a weird thing. I’m sure that the system that I was basing my previous script on used im-switch. (That’s what’s installed there now.) But I just had the opportunity to instal Ubuntu on yet another machine, and I couldn’t get my own instructions to work either, until I installed im-config instead and ran that. (In that case, there’s no choice as specific as scim-bridge, just scim.) Then (upon restarting X) it worked.

    • CommentRowNumber15.
    • CommentAuthorMike Shulman
    • CommentTimeOct 8th 2011

    Hmm, I suppose maybe that means I would need to upgrade my Ubuntu. Looks like im-config is only available in 11.04.

    • CommentRowNumber16.
    • CommentAuthorTobyBartels
    • CommentTimeOct 8th 2011

    Well, it should work with im-switch (and certainly has worked for me in as low as 08.04), but I no longer have anything below 11.04 myself to test with.

    • CommentRowNumber17.
    • CommentAuthorAndrew Stacey
    • CommentTimeOct 10th 2011

    I just tried this on my debian system. I found that I didn’t have im-switch but did have im-config and chose scim there. I get an icon in my notifications thingy which lets me choose an input method, and using that in this text box I can now write α and β and things like that, but I couldn’t figure out how to get the trigger to work.

    However, my experience should not be taken as a reliable data point since I already use xmodmap to mess around with my keyboard so it might be that my chosen trigger is not getting triggered due to keycode changes.

    I also found that it didn’t work with my choice of terminal (unicode-rxvt, ironically).

    • CommentRowNumber18.
    • CommentAuthorMike Shulman
    • CommentTimeOct 10th 2011

    I’ll try to remember to play around with this the next time I do a clean install.

    • CommentRowNumber19.
    • CommentAuthorTobyBartels
    • CommentTimeDec 20th 2011

    Hello again, Mike!

    Part of the problem getting SCIM to work consistently seems to be this: it is no longer the preferred thing to use! Instead, all of the cool Ubuntu hackers are using IBus (the Intelligent Input Bus, which ought to be IIBus, but it’s only IBus). I found some instructions for IBus in Ubuntu before 11.04, which might work for you; however, these instructions seem to be completely irrelevant to 11.04 itself, and I didn’t get the chance to try them.

    Here are my own instructions for 11.04 (and maybe 11.10 or later?), which may be incomplete or redundant (since I tried several things along the way):

    • Under System Settings (which is now under the power button in the upper right corner, if you haven’t moved your app tray around), go to System -> Language Support -> Language -> Keyboard input method system -> ibus.
    • Install the package ibus-tables-latex.
    • Under System Settings again, go to Other -> Keyboard Input Methods -> Input Method -> Select an input method -> Other -> latex -> Add.
    • Reboot the system.
    • There should now be an IBus app icon in your app tray, looking like a little keyboard.
    • Open something with a text input window (like a web browser, a text editor, or a terminal emulator).
    • Either hit Alt-‘ to switch to the LaTeX input method, or choose that input method from the IBus app icon.
    • Hit the backslash key.
    • Type the name of a common LaTeX command sequence for a special character.
    • Hit Alt-‘ again or turn Input method Off from the IBus app icon.

    Good luck!

    PS: If you like using Ctrl-space (as I do), you may want to delete it from System Settings -> Other -> Keyboard Input Methods -> General -> Keyboard Shortcuts -> Enable or disable. You can also replace Alt-‘ there with something that you like better. (The other defaults listed there don’t exist on U.S. keyboards.)

    PPS: You can now get to System Settings -> Other -> Keyboard Input Methods from the IBus app icon under Preferences; it’s the same thing.

    • CommentRowNumber20.
    • CommentAuthorMike Shulman
    • CommentTimeDec 22nd 2011

    Thanks! One of these days I’m going to find time to upgrade, and then I’ll give this a try.

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