Re: Question on Mule and Makor2, font display vs char input?

[Stefan Monnier]

>    There is a LaTeX font environment called makor2 which allows a user to
>    create output  using Hebrew  characters.  These output  characters are
>    often defined by multi-byte combinations.   So it would be nice to have
>    an Emacs  mode which allowed a user  at the keyboard to  type a single
>    input  key and have  that keystroke  display the  proper corresponding
>    Hebrew  character  on the  screen  while  placing  the proper  set  of
>    matching  characters into  the  file  for LaTeX  Makor2.   There is  a
>    standard keyboard setup use in Israel  which can be followed and a set
>    of Mule Hebrew screen fonts seem to be readily available.

There are several issues here:
1 - what encoding can be used by makor2 in the TeX files: for hebrew
    characters, Emacs-21.3 supports ISO-8859-8 but not utf-8.
    If Makor2 requires utf-8, you'll need to use Emacs-CVS.
2 - right-to-left text: this is not supported yet.
3 - typing in Hebrew characters: you need to select an input method
    (with C-u C-\).  There's one called `hebrew'.

>    Is there an easy way to  use the existing Mule Hebrew character set as
>    a starting point to create a new Emacs mode definition which will just
>    output the needed Makor2 multi-byte character set?

There's a Hebrew language environment already.

> Any advice on how to make a string already entered into the buffer
> render according to the current input method?  For example, a function
> I could run that would make the string in quotes "\lambda" appear as a
> lambda character in quotes.  Preferably this would be a function that
> would run on a string and then use an overlay to change the way the
> text looks and "feels" when you're editing (but when you save the
> buffer, it would save as latex code, by default).

There's X-Symbol which does just that (tho in a different way).

> Another function would run over the whole buffer, doing the quail
> translations as it went.

I don't know of any function that takes chars from a buffer and runs them
through quail.  Quail is designed to take input from the keyboard, not from
a buffer.


        Stefan