On 02.02.18 16:31, Andrew Pennebaker wrote: > I would really like convenient access to ligatures in my word processing > software. Unfortunately, none of the major text editing applications > appears to handle ligatures intelligently: Each of Emacs, Vim, Nano, MS > Word, Google Drive, Libre Office, and InDesign type a dumb "ae" when the > user presses the a and e keyboard keys, whereas historically this sequence > is typically rendered with the ash æ rune.
OK, but Vim handles all sorts of ligatures quite elegantly. (See :h digraphs , and to list them :digraphs) Granted, when I write emails in Danish, it quickly becomes tedious to type ^Kae for æ, so I have the following mappings: " Mapping Style: :let mapleader = ";" " Mapping åæø and «» is handier than digraphs: inoremap <expr> <Leader>a "\uE5" inoremap <expr> <Leader>e "\uE6" inoremap <expr> <Leader>o "\uF8" inoremap <expr> <A-<> "\uAB" inoremap <expr> <A->> "\uBB" Now ;e gives æ, ;a gives å, and ;o gives ø. While it's only one double keystroke less, the typing style is much more natural and fully mnemonic. Using <A-e> instead of <Leader>e would reduce it to one double keystroke, but I find it mnemonically convenient to reserve the alt key for more broadly transformative actions. If you need a literal ;e, as in these examples, then ^V;e makes the semicolon literal. If you need thorn, it's ^Kth, giving þ. Also useful is ^K2S when needing e.g. m², and ^K+- for ±. So it's all there, and has been for at least one decade, probably two. And with mappings, convenience can be amplified. Erik -- When printing with movable type was invented around 1450, typefaces included many ligatures and additional letters, such as the letter þ (thorn) which was first substituted in English with y (e.g. ye olde shoppe), but later written as th. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligature_%28typography%29 -- -- You received this message from the "vim_use" maillist. Do not top-post! Type your reply below the text you are replying to. For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "vim_use" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
