Re: How to force markup without spaces

[K <k_foreign@outlook.com>]

On Tue, 2022-07-26 at 13:30 +0700, Max Nikulin wrote:

> I have not tested it, but I expect you can use
> - export filter that removes zero-width spaces at the last export
> stage.
> I assume that your documents do not contain them besides markup
> workaround
> - #+latex_header: \DeclareUnicodeCharacter{200B}{}
> - custom link
> 
>     #+begin_src elisp :results none :exports both
>       (org-link-set-parameters
>        "sep"
>        :export (lambda (path desc backend)
>                (if (org-export-derived-backend-p backend 'org)
>                    (org-link-make-string (concat "sep:" path) desc)
>                  (or desc ""))))
>     #+end_src
>     "中文[[sep:][*测*]]试"

I tested the second workaround, and replaced the \DeclareUnicodeCharacter{200B}{} sequence with \newunicodechar{​}{} sequence since I am using xelatex, which does not support the former.
It works fine so far.

> In other thread we are discussing advantages and problems of
> switching
> from PdfLaTeX to LuaLaTeX for non-latin scripts. The latter is a
> Unicode
> engine. I am curious what is your opinion from standpoint of Chinese
> language, namely amount of required customization in both cases. I
> think, it is better to either start a dedicated thread, or find the
> part
> of discussion related to fonts and babel (LaTeX package) setup.

As far as I know, Chinese users commonly use ctex package https://ctan.org/pkg/ctex to handle Chinese typesetting problem, and they prefer xelatex and lualatex over pdflatex. They don't support more fonts when using pdflatex, compared with using xelatex etc. (you can see that on page 7 of their pdf document). So I just use xelatex and don't have much experience using pdflatex.

When using ctex, you just need to declare \documentclass{ctexart} (ctexart is a ctex version article) to use Chinese characters. Then if your system has the required default fonts, the pdf documents should be OK.