Re: Allowing \N to accept hex numbers?

[Oliver Corff]

Should read:

neither anticipate nor expect.

Please accept my apologies,

Oliver.


On 18/01/2021 13:35, Oliver Corff wrote:
> Hi Dorai,
>
> oops, I did neither anticipate or expect such a behaviour (and use
> case). I am sorry.
>
> The question is if whether you intend to access the complete Dingbats
> font in this way or just a few characters in it.
>
> If you need every single character of the font, my suggestion for a
> workaround will be clumsy, but if it is just a few characters, you can
> define one or more strings as in the following example for letter 0x41
> (uppercase A).
>
> .\" Define String equivalent from hex input to target output:
> .\" This example is ASCII uppercase A first in hex, then in decimal
> notation
> .ds 41 65
> .\" Use that string as argument to \N
> \N'\*[41]' \" will print char 0x41, or "A"
>
> This is my humble suggestion for a workaround; the elegant way would be
> a small function that returns the decimal value of a hex input as to
> cover all characters of that font.
>
> If you need just a handful of characters, I think this is the easiest
> way; you can pack all ".ds hex dec" definitions in a small file which
> you call with
> .so myhextodec_lut.roff
>
> Oliver.
>
>
> On 18/01/2021 02:53, ds26gte--- via wrote:
> >   I'm trying to access a code point in a non-Unicode font, namely the
> > ITC Zapf Dingbats font that comes with groff. E.g., the code point
> > 0x6E in Dingbats is a black square, and so far I see no way of using
> > the hex number directly to typeset a black square. I have to convert
> > it to 110 decimal, e.g., \f(ZD\N'110'\fP.
> >
> > Following your message, I tried using \f(ZD\[u006E]\fP, but no dice.
> > U+006E is of course n, and groff tries to find "special character
> > \n", even though the prevailing font when \[u006E] is being invoked
> > is a non-Unicode font.
> >
> > --d
> >
> >       On Sunday, January 17, 2021, 05:46:30 PM EST, Oliver Corff
> > <oliver.corff@email.de> wrote:
> >
> >   Hi Dorai,
> >
> > is there any constraint that forces you to use \N, or can you use other
> > expressions as well? In that case, \[uxxxx] might be the desired answer
> > for you, where xxxx is a hex representation of a Unicode code point.
> >
> > Oliver.
> >
> >
> > On 17/01/2021 19:34, Dorai Sitaram wrote:
> > > \N'num' takes a number num and typesets the glyph corresponding to
> > > the code point num in the prevailing font. Currently, num can only
> > > be in decimal format. Is there a downside to allowing hex numbers,
> > > with the usual distinguishing prefix 0x?
> > >
> > > --d