Is there any reason to prefer a unicode symbol versus its LaTeX command counterpart?

Question

For example, consider the Swedish letter "Å" which is also the symbol for a unit of length in chemistry. When writing a document, there are three different ways to achieve this character:

1. Å
2. \AA
3. \r{A}

Given that there are three different ways placing the character Å into a document, is there any reason to prefer one over the other? Unicode is pretty ubiquitous nowadays, so is there any reason I wouldn't want to just place the symbol directly into the document?

Answer 1

Do you use BibTeX to create a formatted bibliography? If so, let's assume the bibliography contains entries authored by persons with surnames Åsgard and Æsgard. You may be surprised to learn that BibTeX will sort these surnames alphabetically after Z, whereas BibTeX will sort {\AA}sgard and {\AE}sgard with the As. If the publication is in English, your readers may get very confused if you spell the authors' surnames using Å and Æ and their publications don't show up under A. (For more information on the subject of using accented characters under BibTeX and the attendant sorting issues, please see the posting How to write “ä” and other umlauts and accented letters in bibliography?)

Please note that the preceding paragraph applies to BibTeX — and to non-Unicode-aware versions of BibTeX in particular. (AFAICT, very very few BibTeX users employ bibtexu, which is said to be Unicode-aware.) If one uses biblatex+biber instead of BibTeX, the sorting issue can be adjusted on the fly to adhere to language-specific sorting standards. I.e., you can set suitable options to instruct biber to keep the entries authored by Åsgard and Æsgard with the As or, alternatively, place them after the Zs.

Answer 2

Assuming you are using pdflatex (not a Unicode TeX such as Lualatex) then

• Å is defined by \DeclareUnicodeCharacter{00C5}{\r A} so it expands essentially to to \r{A}

• \AA is defined by \def \AA {\r A} so it expands to the same thing as Å

• \r{A} is defined (in T1 encoding) by \DeclareTextComposite{\r}{T1}{A}{197} so it adds the character from slot 197 in the T1 encoding, which is Å

So to latex, all three are the same although it I wouldn't really describe using Å as "just place the symbol directly into the document"

Which is most convenient depends a lot on your keyboard, I can't easily type Å on this one for example.

Answer 3

• Not every font includes the high Unicode glyphs, so putting one of them in a macro allows me to redefine it as necessary. You can still use the Unicode character in the macro definition.
• Sometimes it is more convenient to create a macro and write, say, \undertie{}, than to look up the Unicode point and enter it manually, or to use a graphical character menu to select it.
• Some Unicode characters are not clearly rendered on the console (like combining characters), so those of us who write in an editor like Vim may prefer a macro whose meaning is obvious.

Answer 4

PDFTeX, unlike XeTeX or LuaTeX, cannot understand combining characters such as U+030A. So, Å in decomposed form would fail, and you would need to use Å (U+00C5).

This contradicts the Unicode standard, which says canonically-equivalent characters should have the same meaning, but the maintainers have said that it is a technical limitation of the 8-bit PDFTeX engine.

Not all hyphenation patterns understand combining characters in the newer engines, either. I’ve had documents hyphenate between a base character and its accents. This might have been fixed by now, at least to prevent a line break before a naked accent, but not all languages will hyphenate words with certain combining accents correctly. In LuaLaTeX or XeLaTeX, \usepackage{inputnormalization} will convert the text of the document into NFC form (that is, the precomposed standard form used on nearly all Web pages).

Answer 5

• Using the unicode character will allow you to re-use the same portion of text outside of LaTeX directly. For example, you could email someone a paragraph directly from your tex file.
• Using the LaTeX command is often more intuitive, as you are simply writing the name of the character, rather than having to remember keyboard macros for unicode (unless you are using a keyboard mapping which includes these symbols).
• Whichever you decide to use, it is most important you remain consistent throughout your document.

Answer 6

Adding to the other responses:

To generalize the ambit of the question, and for text mode only (math mode is a different realm), the answer is, "it depends", since which input method is the most suitable to use will vary with the circumstances, even within the same document.

With a few glyphs, combined with a keyboard, or keyboard overlay, or copy-paste source, or insertion mechanism, then "direct" input is one way:

Note that the unit symbol is a different glyph codepoint than the letter.

With a few glyphs, and without a keyboard or overlay etc, "indirect" input by specifying code points can be used:

To save typing, commonly-used characters can be assigned to suitably named macros:

And to save continually swapping keyboards in multi-character, multi-script scenarios (assuming there are keyboards or overlays defined, or definable, to start with), or to save having to type many different codepoint digits, then a transliteration method could be suitable (for example, using expl3 find-replace commands behind the scenes):

MWE

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[table]{xcolor}
\newcommand\thdr{\rowcolor{blue!8}}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Noto Serif}
\newfontface\fcunei{Noto Sans Cuneiform}[Scale=1.3]
\newfontface\fhiero{Noto Sans Egyptian Hieroglyphs}[Scale=1.5]
\newcommand\abos{\Large\phantom{(}}
\usepackage{xparse}

\DeclareTextFontCommand\textcunei{\fcunei}
\DeclareTextFontCommand\texthiero{\fhiero}

\newcommand\ringa{Å}
\newcommand\alan{\textcunei{𒀩}}
\newcommand\seatedman{\texthiero{𓀀}}


\ExplSyntaxOn

\newcommand\doreplace[2]{
\tl_replace_all:Nnn  \l_mytemp_tl { #1 } { #2 } 

}

\tl_new:N \l_mytemp_tl 
\NewDocumentCommand { \tlcunei } { m } {%
\tl_set:Nn \l_mytemp_tl { #1 }
\doreplace{alan}{𒀩}
\doreplace{deity}{𒀭}
\doreplace{lady}{𒊩𒌆}
\tl_use:N \l_mytemp_tl
}

\NewDocumentCommand { \tlhiero } { m } {%
\tl_set:Nn \l_mytemp_tl { #1 }
\doreplace{RA}{xxx}
\doreplace{seatedman}{𓀀}
\doreplace{falcon}{𓅃}
\doreplace{ibex}{𓃵}
\doreplace{N5}{𓇳}
\doreplace{Z1}{𓏤}
\doreplace{C2}{𓁛}
\doreplace{r}{𓂋}
\doreplace{a}{𓂝}
\doreplace{xxx}{\RA}
\tl_use:N \l_mytemp_tl
}

\newcommand\RA{
\begin{tabular}{ccc}
\begin{tabular}{c}
\tlhiero{r}\\\tlhiero{a}\\
\end{tabular} &
\begin{tabular}{c}
\tlhiero{N5}\\\tlhiero{Z1}\\
\end{tabular} &
\begin{tabular}{c}
\Large\tlhiero{C2}\\
\end{tabular} \\
\end{tabular}}

\ExplSyntaxOff


\begin{document}

\begin{tabular}{cl}
\thdr
Glyph & Method (``direct'')  \\
\hline
Å & U+212B ANGSTROM SIGN \abos\\
Å & U+00C5 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH RING ABOVE \\
Å & A + ̊  U+030A COMBINING RING ABOVE \\
\fcunei 𒀩 & U+12029 CUNEIFORM SIGN ALAN \\
\fhiero 𓀀 & U+13000 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH A001 : seated man \\
\hline
\end{tabular}

\bigskip
\begin{tabular}{cl}
\thdr
Glyph & Method (``indirect'')  \\
\hline
\rowcolor{yellow!15}
^^^^212b, \Uchar"212B, \symbol{"212B} & 
\verb|^^^^212b, \Uchar"212B, \symbol{"212B}| \abos\\
\rowcolor{green!15}
^^^^00c5, \Uchar"00C5, \symbol{"00C5} & 
\verb|^^^^00c5, \Uchar"00C5, \symbol{"00C5}| \\
\rowcolor{yellow!15}
^^^^0041^^^^030a, \Uchar"0041\Uchar"030A, \symbol{"0041}\symbol{"030A} & 
\parbox{0.4\textwidth}{\ttfamily \textasciicircum\textasciicircum\textasciicircum\textasciicircum0041\textasciicircum\textasciicircum\textasciicircum\textasciicircum030a, \textbackslash Uchar"0041\textbackslash Uchar"030A, \textbackslash symbol\{"0041\}\textbackslash symbol\{"030A\}} \\
\rowcolor{green!15}
\fcunei ^^^^^^012029\Uchar"12029\symbol{"12029} & \verb|^^^^^^012029,\Uchar"12029,\symbol{"12029}| \\
\rowcolor{yellow!15}
\fhiero ^^^^^^013000\Uchar"13000\symbol{"13000} & \verb|^^^^^^013000,\Uchar"13000,\symbol{"13000}| \\
\hline
\end{tabular}


\bigskip
\begin{tabular}{cl}
\thdr
Glyph & Method (``named macros'')  \\
\hline
\ringa & 
\verb|\ringa| \abos\\
\alan & 
\verb|\alan| \\
\seatedman & 
\verb|\seatedman| \\
\hline
\end{tabular}





\setlength{\tabcolsep}{0pt}
\bigskip
\begin{tabular}{cl}
\thdr
Glyph & Method (``transliteration'')  \\
\hline
\fcunei\tlcunei{alan deitylady} & 
\verb|\tlcunei{alan deitylady}| \abos\\
\fhiero\tlhiero{RA} & \verb|\tlhiero{RA}|\\
\fhiero\tlhiero{seatedman ibex falcon} & 
\verb|\tlhiero{seatedman ibex falcon}| \\
\hline
\end{tabular}

\end{document}

Answer 7

If your keyboard contains entry for these unicode symbols, it may be faster and easier to type them directly as unicode, or copy/paste instead of looking up the LaTeX command. It can also make the text easier to read and edit: Jörg instead of J{\"o}rg.