How can I make Catalan double l (l·l) being shown properly?

[Ausias]

Hi there,

Catalan language uses a special double l called ela geminada (l·l). Example: “col·locar” (it means “to place”).

The right way for representing this is using the “middle dot” (·). But when using this character in Typst, some space is added between both “l”, as you can see.

This is absolutely wrong, because in Catalan the “l·” is a single letter. According to Unicode, the middle dot must be treated not as a point breaking the word, but as a “letter extender”.

Some of you might be thinking that Unicode has two characters for the double l: Ŀ (U+013F) and ŀ (U+0140). But these are legacy characters that were used before the middle dot was adopted as the standard representation of the double l. They are not recommended for use in modern Catalan writing at all. So this doesn’t solve the problem.

Please bear in mind that despite that, at the end of a line you must use a hyphen instead of the middle dot; e.g. expected behaviour:

bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla col-
locar bla bla bla bla bla bla bla.

How can I solve or fix this issue?

Thanks in advance,
Ausiàs.

[Ausias]

Hi there,

Believe it or not, this workaround lets middle dot to be shown properly:

#show "·": "·"

I feel that this is too tricky, anyway. There’s no any need to code this.

Any ideas? Is this an issue?

Regards,
Ausiàs.

[flokl]

The “middle dot” is U+00B7? I pasted your example into an empty document and the spacing seems right, can you please give more information or better a minimal code snippet that shows the issue?

@Ausias

Believe it or not, this workaround lets middle dot to be shown properly:

#show "·": "·"

To me the two symbols both show as U+00B7, so this should IMO do nothing, it replaces simply U+00B7 with U+00B7. But I guess nice if it works for you :).

[Ausias]

Hi, @flokl ,

Of course.

We use the U+00B7 character (SHIFT + 3 in a Spanish-configured keyboard; there’s not “Catalan keyboard”). This: · .

Copypasting from the theme, the language is properly configured:

  // TIPOGRAFIA I ESTILS

  #set text(
    font: "Crimson Pro",
    size: 12pt,
    lang: "ca",
    region: "eu",
  )

Here you are a random piece of text including Catalan double l:

Va ser un dels pocs casos a Espanya de vies i vides paral·leles. La competència entre ambdues va impedir a la de dalt fer prou caixa. Per això, i per més coses, no va poder prolongar-se.

Compiling:

typst compile --root .. main-CA.typ dist/VA-CA.pdf --open

This is the result:

This is the copied text from the pdf:

Va ser un dels pocs casos a Espanya de vies i vides paral·leles. La competència entre ambdues va impedir a la de dalt fer prou caixa. Per això, i per més coses, no va poder prolongar-se.

Now I’m aplying the show rule:

  #show "·": "·"

Compiling:

typst compile --root .. main-CA.typ dist/VA-CA.pdf --open

And it suddenly works:

This is the copied text from that second pdf:

Va ser un dels pocs casos a Espanya de vies i vides paral·leles. La competència entre ambdues va impedir a la de dalt fer prou caixa. Per això, i per més coses, no va poder prolongar-se.

Let’s compare:

The words in red are a wrong application of the middle dot, while it does work with the show rule (words in black). The right application is actually quite good.

Thanks in advance and regards,
Ausiàs.

[vmartel08]

I would suggest this excellent description be tracked in GitHub Issues

Either replicate or link to this post.