[net.text] Accents and troff

bjf@utcs.UUCP (Bruce Freeman) (04/06/85)

We have a genuine C/A/T-8 phototypesetter that has real accents including a real
cedilla (no comma under a c for us!). The problem is that the definition of
accents in the various \* implementations in me and ms are so device dependent
as to make them worthless. The only way I have found to get good accents on our
typesetter and any other output device is to use the \o command in troff. While
this entails more typing it guarantees that your accents will be properly
centered. For example to get a cedilla we use \(ce so to typeset francais I
would say fran\o"c\(ce"ais. The cedilla is always lined up under the c and I
don't have to decipher troff hieroglyphics in the tmac file. The drawback of
course is that not everyone has a cedilla and if they do it might not be called
\(ce so this method is not as portable as \*, but it sure looks better.
-- 
Bruce Freeman	University of Toronto	{decvax|ihnp4|utzoo}!utcs!bjf