[texhax] pdftex and Unicode

[Bob Tennent]

 >|
 >|I have a document that uses just one font, \tt, and contains the string
 >|"1/2".
 >|The document renders perfectly under pdftex.
 >|
 >|I would like to change the document so that instead of "1/2", it uses the
 >|single Unicode character ½ (VULGAR FRACTION ONE HALF, Unicode character
 >|555,
 >|0x22b).
 >|
 >|https://texfaq.org/FAQ-unicode says:
 >|
 >|> ???Modern??? TeX-alike applications, XeTeX and LuaTeX read their
 >|input using
 >|> UTF-8 representations of Unicode as standard. They also use TrueType or
 >|> OpenType fonts for output; each such font has tables that tell the
 >|> application which part(s) of the Unicode space it covers; the tables
 >|enable
 >|> the engines to decide which font to use for which character (assuming
 >|there
 >|> is any choice at all).
 >|
 >|which left me with the impression that nowadays I don't have to struggle
 >|with
 >|the old 255-glyph limit or any of the concomitant pain of handling
 >|Unicode,
 >|and all I needed to do was to change the string "1/2" in the TeX
 >|source file
 >|to "½". But that seems not to be the case: nothing at all displayed at the
 >|point where I expected to see the "½" in the resultant PDF file.
 >|
 >|Here is a stripped-down trivial test.tex source file that shows what
 >|I mean:
 >|
 >|----
 >|
 >|\tt
 >|
 >|Line 1: 1/2
 >|
 >|Line 2: ½
 >|
 >|\end
 >|
 >|----
 >|
 >|No errors are raised by pdftex, but the "½" character is absent in
 >|the output.
 >|
 >|What is the correct way to have pdftex produce the "½" glyph?

Use xelatex.

Bob T.