Re: how to add special glyphs

[Max Nikulin <manikulin@gmail.com>]

On 08/03/2023 07:29, Rob Sargent wrote:
>> LuaLaTeX may be instructed to use fallback fonts, see e.g.
...
>> To my taste it is too low level.
> That I placed the unicode into the text was "too low level"?  I could 
> argue that "it's a UTF doc", or that "\ding{55}" is bizarrely high 
> level.  Other's have shown methods which maximize the cross export 
> experience.  I'll consider those.  I'm not sure LuaLaTex is an option 
> for me.

I would prefer to use Unicode symbols in UTF-8 encoded documents. While 
browsers and office software tries to find some substitution when some 
glyph is not available in requested font, configuration of LaTeX engines 
is more complicated. Support of Unicode in LuaTeX is much better than in 
pdfTeX. Unfortunately for characters outside of ~latin-1 set, all fonts 
must be carefully configured. I consider necessity to specify font per 
language and fallback fonts as too low level operations for regular users.

I do not see a robust way to determine fonts available for LaTeX to 
implement automatic configuration in ox-latex with reasonable amount of 
code.

I recommend to consider LuaLaTeX if you are going to use Unicode. 
Alternatives are PDF export through LibreOffice or through HTML and a 
browser.