[Scilab-users] New constant %chars to get sets of symbols

[Stéphane Mottelet]

> Le 31 déc. 2020 à 15:28, Antoine Monmayrant <antoine.monmayrant at laas.fr> a écrit :
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 31/12/2020 13:44, Samuel Gougeon wrote:
>>> Le 31/12/2020 à 10:36, Antoine Monmayrant a écrit :
>>>> On 29/12/2020 16:39, Samuel Gougeon wrote:
>>>>> As well, i must confess that having a ALT+X or any other keys shortcut able to convert a series of 2 to 4 input unicodes to the corresponding character -- as proposed in wish #16505 -- would be of almost no help to me, because i do not remember unicodes of any non-ascii characters. Who does? Such a ALT-X shortcut is used for instance in the -- yet great -- Inskscape free drawing software. Then, each time that a greek letter or another symbol must be used, we need to find its unicodes in an extra document (most often on internet). It's definitely not handy.
>>>> I agree with you here.
>>>> It is not a good idea to use such a shortcut that replicates what is already present at the OS level: on linux for example Crtl+Alt+Maj+u allows to type the unicode of a character (like 3BB for λ). Equivalent shortcuts exist under Windows and MacOS.
>>>> 
>>>> From my personal experience, my preferred implementation is the one used by Julia: type the LaTeX macro (like \lambda for λ) then Tab and you get the unicode character.
>>>> I assume implementation something like that in Scilab is quite a lot of work...
>>>> Your proposition might be a good compromise between ease of implementation and usefulness.
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> Thank you for your input and for supporting the proposal, Antoine.
>>> 
>>> About any shortcut proposal, may i add that, yes it would be a more general solution than the selected characters in %chars. But while getting an external document referencing unicodes of some requested symbols, i don't see any reason to get the unicodes and use the shortcut, instead of directly copying the character from this external document and copying it wherever it is needed in Scilab or elsewhere, as in a documentation page edited with Notepadd++ for instance.
>>> Therefore, the right external document to select is not a document listing unicodes, but more simply a document listing characters sets rendered without gif or other images. Before implementing this %chars, it was what i used to do.
>>> 
>>> I am not sure that implementing the Julia solution with LaTeX would improve a lot the situation:
>>> 
>>> first, we still have to remember a code, the latex one ; this is simple for common characters, but get harder and harder for less frequent ones. While a selection among displayed/rendered characters do not need to remember any code. I have written 700 pages in LaTeX without wysiwym software like LyX, and hopefully i had always a hand on "A Guide to LaTeX-2e"  and its tables of illustrated codes to get the right one.
>>> Moreover, we can put in %chars some characters that have no LaTeX code.
>>> Finally, implementing a LaTeX shortcut could not be used when editing the documentation out of the console and Scinotes, except to render the character in order to then, anyway, copy/paste it wherever needed.
>>> So, to me, the main purposes are
>>> 
>>> to stop having to remember any code for the -- say 500 or 1000 -- most used characters, when no complex expression is required.
>> Well, I don't see how this should work then.
>> How do I select λ in your proposed solution? Should I have to visually scan a 500-symbol long list?
>> I think I missed something in your proposal.
>>  
>> to stop having to search in an external document when working with Scilab
>> and possibly, to present classes of characters, what can help finding the required one.
>> Beyong this current topic and the trivial implementation of %chars, it could then even be useful to have an easy way to get the LaTeX code from a selected character, instead of the opposite!
>> 
> Well, here is my assumption (that might be wrong): most of the people trying to use λ or ∆ might be aware that they are called lambda and Delta and from there, the LaTeX naming convention is usually quite sensible: \lambda, \Delta.
> 
> I think there is quite a difference between remembering Ctrl+Maj+Alt+u+03BB and remembering \lambda+Tab to get λ!
> For me, the second solution is way more user friendly... :-)
> 
+1

S.


> 
> 
> Antoine
> 
>> Regards
>> Samuel
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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