[Mac OS X TeX] Language setting and backslash character

[Ross Moore]

[Charset ISO-2022-JP unsupported, filtering to ASCII...]
>   I am a happy user of TeXShop here in Japan. I was curious to ask if 
> anyone else has had the same problem as me --- namely with the Mac OS X 
> set to Japanese as the preferred language, the backslash character is 
> changed automatically to the "yen" symbol.  For systems up to and 
> including Mac OS 9, the "yen" character and the backslash character were 
> one and the same thing (the same ascii code).  With OS X, however, the 
> two characters have different codes (unicode).  This means that one 

Hmm; that's certainly an annoying problem for you.

Sorry, I cannot see a way around this with existing TeX implementations,
since TeX has not been written to recognise the Unicode charset.
That means that if Apple has dictated that the character code of \ (in English)
will show inside editors as a "yen" symbol, then that's the way it will be
when looking at TeX source. (Note that the files should still typeset OK.)

Of course, you can set the language back to English (or other language)
temporarily when working with TeX documents.

> problem with JIS keyboards is that there is not a backslash character on 
> the keyboard -- only a "yen" character.  Is there a way to enter a 
> backslash character with a JIS keyboard?  The second question relates to 
> my observation that with the language setting set to have Japanese as 
> the preferred language, the backslash character in previously saved 
> files (e.g. the sample file for TeXShop) have all of their backslash 
> characters changed to a different character (usually a "yen" symbol").  
> Is this a feature of Cocoa?  How can one avoid this "feature" with 
> Japanese as a preferred language.  Note this problem doesn't happen in 
> all applications (e.g. it doesn't happen in BBEdit lite).  I doubt this 
> was a design goal of the TeXShop authors, but rather came along with the 
> Cocoa class they are using.  Is there a switch to turn off such behavior 
> (or does it have more desirable effects sometimes)? I have solved the 
> problem by getting rid of my JIS keyboard and setting English to be the 
> preferred language, but for Japanese around me there must be a better 
> solution.  Any ideas?

THe solution cannot come from within TeX;
it must come from the operating system (Mac OS or an extension)
or from an option in the editor to show \ rather than "yen".

I know of no such solution, but someone else with experience using
a Mac and JIS may know of one.


Best of luck,

	Ross Moore.
 
> 										Paul Fons
> Dr. Paul Fons
> Senior Research Scientist
> National Institute for Advanced Industrial Science and Technology
> Optoelectronics Institute
> Energy Electronics Institute
> Umezono 1-1-1
> Tsukuba, Ibaraki
> JAPAN 305-8568
> paul-fons at aist.go.jp
> lines below are in Japanese:
> $B")(B305-8568$B0q>k8)$D$/$P;TG_1`(B1-1-1
> $B<gG$8&5f41%]!<%k!&%U%)%s%9(B


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