Re: (dsssl) Double-dash sign and TeX backend

Subject: Re: (dsssl) Double-dash sign and TeX backend
From: David Carlisle <davidc@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2001 18:43:37 +0100
> Is there a way to get the right result both in HTML and in TeX? A
> possible solution would be to render '-' as '{-}'.

Safer to use -\kern\z@ as {} doesn't normally supress ligatures
(although it will in this case as - isn't (normally) a letter.

I thought jadetex had some code for this already, Sebastian?
if not then in the simple case that your generated .tex file
doesn't have any - signs in (for example) length specifications,
and all the - that appear are being typeset then you can go
something like this in jadetex.cfg (untested)

\let\origminus-
\catcode`\-\active
\AtBeginDocument{\def-{\origminus\kern\z@}}
\catcode`\-12\relax

In the general case you need to make - into a fancier definition so that
\def\sbMin%
{-12\p@}

does the right thing, ie - still just means minus in such contexts.

It would probably be easy for the tex backend of jade to just
output - appearing in pcdata as some macro that can be defined in
jadetex as a non ligature. jade knows which characters come from data and
which come from number or length specifications, but it's harder to
distinguish these at the tex level.

An alternative is to fix the problem at source, and generate a modified
set of tex font metrics which don't have the annoying -- ligaure.
(This is fairly easy, just run tfm to pl, edit the ligature table to
delete the offending line, and convert it back to a tfm)

David

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