Text commands: all encodings

One of the main differences between L^ATEX2_e and L^ATEX 2.09 is that L^ATEX2_e can deal with fonts in arbitrary encodings. (A font encoding is the sequence of characters in the font--for example a Cyrillic font would have a different encoding from a Greek font.) The two major font encodings that are used for Latin languages such as English or German are OT1 (Donald Knuth's 7-bit encoding, which has been used during most of TEX's lifetime) and T1 (the new 8-bit `Cork' encoding). L<sup>A</sup>TEX 2.09 only supported the OT1 encoding, whereas L<sup>A</sup>TEX2<sub>e</sub> has support for both OT1 and T1 built-in. The next section will cover the new commands which are available if you have T1-encoded fonts. This section describes new commands which are available in all encodings. Most of these commands provide characters which were available in L<sup>A</sup>TEX 2.09 already. For example \textemdash gives an `em dash', which was available in L^ATEX 2.09 by typing ---. However, some fonts (for example a Greek font) may not have the --- ligature, but you will still be able to access an em dash by typing \textemdash.

\r{<text>}

This command gives a `ring' accent, for example `o' can be typed \r{o}.

\SS

This command produces a German `SS', that is a capital `ß'. This letter can hyphenate differently from `SS', so is needed for entering all-caps German.

\textcircled{<text>}

This command is used to build `circled characters' such as \copyright. For example \textcircled{a} produces .

\textcompwordmark

This command is used to separate letters which would normally ligature. For example `fi' is produced with f\textcompwordmark i. Note that the `f' and `i' have not ligatured to produce `fi'. This is rarely useful in English (`shelfful' is a rare example of where it might be used) but is used in languages such as German.

\textvisiblespace

This command produces a `visible space' character ` '. This is sometimes used in computer listings, for example `type hello world'.

\textemdash \textendash \textexclamdown \textquestiondown
\textquotedblleft \textquotedblright \textquoteleft \textquoteright

These commands produce characters which would otherwise be accessed via ligatures:

ligature	character	command
---	--	\textemdash
--	-	\textendash
!`	¡	\textexclamdown
?`	¿	\textquestiondown
``	``	\textquotedblleft
''	''	\textquotedblright
`	`	\textquoteleft
'	'	\textquoteright

The reason for making these characters directly accessible is so that they will work in encodings which do not have these characters.

\textbullet \textperiodcentered

These commands allow access to characters which were previously only available in math mode:

math command	character	text command
\bullet	$\bullet$	\textbullet
\cdot	$\cdot$	\textperiodcentered

\textbackslash \textbar \textless \textgreater

These commands allow access to ASCII characters which were only available in verbatim or math mode:

math command	character	text command
\backslash	$\backslash$	\textbackslash
\mid	$\mid$	\textbar
<<	<	\textless
>>	>	\textgreater

\textasciicircum \textasciitilde

These commands allow access to ASCII characters which were previously only available in verbatim:

verbatim	text command
^	\textasciicircum
~	\textasciitilde

\textregistered \texttrademark

These commands provide the `registered trademark' (R) and `trademark' (TM) symbols.