Re: [help-texinfo] problems with German characters

[list]

Am Samstag, dem 20. Jun 2009 schrieb Karl Berry:

>     output the table of content in the sidebar was messed up.
>     It replaced for example "ä" with "a". 
> 
> Doing things right in the bookmarks is very difficult, because it does
> not use the same encoding as the rest of the PDF.  I don't envision any
> fix for this.

using iconv?

If you really must use plain ascii, it would help, if it could be 
transcribed as follows: 
@"A=Ae, @"a=ae, @"O=Oe, @"o=oe, @"U=Ue, @"u=ue, @"s=ss
That replacements are known to every German, although we don't like it.
(note: historically the diaresis where little e's written above the vovels)

>     I found out, that the docbook output was fine, when I replaced the 
>     German characters in the Nodes and section-names with @-codes like 
>     '@"a'. 
> 
> I'm surprised, but hey, if it works, great.

or not... the html output is more important to me.

>     German characters in the Nodes and section-names with @-codes like 
>     '@"a'. So I was pleased for a moment... until I saw, that this messed
>     up the HTML-output again. :-(
> 
> Try makeinfo --commands-in-node-names --html.  I don't know whether it
> will work.

That doesn't help.

It seems to be really broken in more than just one way.
Not only the internal link-names are different, but even the printed output 
is garbled in some places.  It sometimes uses for example 
"Überblick" instead of "Überblick".

>     Another area, which is really problematic is the hyphanation.  
> 
> BTW, with current texinfo.tex and a current TeX installation, it should
> read German patterns ("ngerman", to be specific).

I already installed the latest texinfo.tex and txi-de.tex.
But it is not really that much better.

>     Would it be at least possible to switch the hyphenation completely off?
> 
> @tex
> \global\hyphenpenalty=10000
> @end tex

That is much better!  Thanks for that tip.
It would be nice, if you could make a Texinfo command for that.


P.S.: I think I'm going to have a look at the source code of makeinfo, after
the next release of my project and when I have time... no promise though.

-- 
AKFoerster