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Comment by jpfr | Hacker News Reader

Can we have the inverse transformation also?

So \alpha would become a unicode α and \int would be ∫.

Emacs has an input method that does the transformation automatically [1]. Yet most of my collaborators have not yet caught that bug..

[1] http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TeXInputMethod

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It is meant for those who are already familiar with LaTeX but do not have a handy unicode input method. Emacs has a feature that allows you to literally type \alpha or \in or any of hundreds of other LaTeX commands and have it substituted with the appropriate unicode character right in the plain text buffer you're editing.

So what is needed is a transformation from unicode-alpha to latex-alpha etc? That's no problem to implement, but doesn't emacs do that by itself? Latex can't render those unicode-alphas etc

So wait, just so that I understand: This would be for editors that input unicode greek letters, and preTeX should compile them to \alpha etc? But you seem to suggest the opposite. Care to explain?

It looks like he wants a way to go from \alpha and \int to their respective symbols. But isn't that just LaTeX?

Sure. The modern TeXs (xetex, luatex) take unicode input. Also for math. That makes the text even nicer looking. But most editors are inconvenient for finding the right characters.

Oh now I get it. Yeah I guess every editor that allows for greek input also provides a way for compile-time translation to latex? But if there's still a wish for unicode->latex transformations just open an issue, I'll have look at it

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