path: root/Master/texmf-dist/doc/generic/vntex/vntex.txt

vntex-3.1.2

This file is part of VnTeX.  License: LPPL, version 1.3 or newer,
see: http://www.latex-project.org/lppl.txt 

Authors: Han The Thanh <HanTheThanh@gmx.net> and 
	 Reinhard Kotucha <Reinhard.Kotucha@web.de>

The primary site of VnTeX is 

    http://vntex.org

There is a mailing list (very low traffic) for questions about
VnTeX and typesetting Vietnamese.  To subscribe to the list, visit

    http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/vntex-users


I. Typesetting Vietnamese
*************************

Editor
======
In order to typeset Vietnamese you need an editor in which you can
write Vietnamese.  This is highly system-dependent.  The good news 
is that VnTeX supports most popular encodings used for Vietnamese
like VISCII, TCVN or UTF8.  VNI is however not supported (and will
not be).  In most cases, you can use your favourite editor or TeX shell
(like WinEDT, Texniccenter, Emacs, VIM, ...) with a Vietnamese font.


Typesetting with LaTeX
======================
Some examples and hints for a quick start:


* The simplest case:
  ________________________________________________________
  \documentclass{report}
  \usepackage[viscii]{vietnam} % use VISCII input encoding

  \begin{document}
  <...text in VISCII encoding...>
  \end{document}
  ________________________________________________________

  vietnam.sty has the following options:

  viscii       use VISCII input encoding
  mviscii      use MVISCII input encoding
  tcvn         use TCVN input encoding
  vps	       use VPS input encoding
  utf8	       use UTF8 input encoding (LaTeX)
  utf8x        use UTF8 input encoding (ucs package)
  noinputenc   do not load the inputenc package (use of TCX is assumed)
  nocaptions   do not define Vietnamese captions


* Use babel instead of vietnam package:
  ________________________________________________________
  \documentclass{report}
  \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} % other encoding as `viscii'
                              % or `tcvn' can be used
                              % instead of utf8
  \usepackage[vietnam]{babel}

  \begin{document}
  <...text in utf8 encoding...>
  \end{document}
  ________________________________________________________


* TCX is useful if you want to able to read Vietnamese characters in
  messages about overfull/underfull boxes and the like.  VnTeX comes
  with two TCX tables: viscii-t5 and tcvn-t5.  This implies that you
  can use TCX only with VISCII or TCVN input encoding.  Using TCX
  excludes using inputenc:

  ________________________________________________________
  %& -translate-file=viscii-t5
  \documentclass{report}
  \usepackage[noinputenc]{vietnam}

  \begin{document}
  <...text in VISCII encoding...>
  \end{document}
  ________________________________________________________

  The very first line says that the option `-translate-file=viscii-t5'
  is passed to TeX when compiling the document.  It has the same effect
  as you run:

     latex -translate-file=viscii-t5 foo.tex

  Using TCVN is similar.


Typesetting with plain TeX
==========================
UTF8 input encoding is not supported by plain TeX.  Otherwise it is
quite similar to LaTeX:

* Use with plainenc and plnfss packages:
  ________________________________________________________
  \input t5code
  \input plnfss
  \input plainenc

  \fontencoding{T5}
  \inputencoding{viscii} % or any other encoding except utf8
  \setfontencoding{T5}
  \selectfont

  <...text in VISCII encoding...>
  \bye
  ________________________________________________________


* Use with TCX:
  ________________________________________________________
  %& -translate-file=viscii-t5
  \input t5code
  \input plnfss

  \setfontencoding{T5}
  \selectfont

  <...text in VISCII encoding...>
  \bye
  ________________________________________________________


Use with texinfo
================
TCX is required:
  ________________________________________________________
  %& -translate-file=viscii-t5
  \def\fontprefix{vn}
  \input t5code.tex
  \input texinfo

  <...text in VISCII encoding...>
  ________________________________________________________

plainenc and plnfss are not part of the VnTeX distribution any more but
it is very likely that they are part of the TeX system you are using. 

If you have a plnfss which does not support Vietnamese, please install

    http://vntex.org/download/vntex-support/plnfss.zip


Use with tex4ht
===============
In order to create HTML documents from LaTeX sources, run

   tex4ht "html,uni-html4,charset=utf8" yourfile.tex

You cannot use TCX with tex4ht.


There are some test files for VnTeX in the tests subdirectory.
Please read the file README in this directory.


II. Vietnamese Fonts
********************

VnTeX provides a lot of Vietnamese fonts.  If you do not specify any
font (as in the examples above) you get Vietnamese Computer Modern.
This is an extension to Donald Knuth's Computern Modern Fonts designed
by Han The Thanh.

VnTeX provides Vietnamese characters for some free fonts donated by
URW and Bitstream as well as the Microsoft core fonts.

To get an overview, look at:

   http://vntex.org/fontsamples

There are many fonts, but most of them do not provide support for
mathematics.  If you have to typeset math formulas, you are restricted
to Computer Modern, Latin Modern, Times and Palatino.

Latin Modern (Boguslaw Jackowski and Janusz M. Nowacki) is an
extension to Computer Modern which supports (almost) all latin
languages.  It provides even different accents for Vietnamese
uppercase and lowercase letters.


We describe how to use fonts with LaTeX first.  A description of
plnfss (plain TeX) is given below.

To use Latin Modern instead of VNR, simply

   \usepackage{lmodern}
   \usepackage[viscii]{vietnam}

For Antikwa Torunska, do

    \usepackage{anttor}
    \usepackage[viscii]{vietnam}
   
... or use inputenc and babel instead of vietnam.

It is recommended to specify a roman font, a sans serif font and a
typewriter font separately.  You do not have to specify all of them.
It makes sense, for instance, not to specify a typewriter font -- you
get Computer Modern Typewriter then, which is by far the best
typewriter font you can get today.

\renewcommand\sfdefault{uag}   VnURWGothicL     (AvantGarde)
\renewcommand\rmdefault{ubk}   VnURWBookmanL    (Bookman)
\renewcommand\ttdefault{ucr}   VnNimbusMonL     (Courier)
\renewcommand\sfdefault{uhv}   VnNimbusSanL     (Helvetica)
\renewcommand\rmdefault{unc}   VnCenturySchL    (New Century Schoolbok)
\usepackage{mathpazo}          VnURWPalladioL   (Palatino)
\usepackage{mathptm}           VnNimbusRomNo9L  (Times)

There is also a real small caps font for VnURWPalladioL, made by Ralf Stubner
and extended by Han The Thanh.  There are still some support files missing.

By default, you get the faked small caps but you can use real small caps with
some restrictions.  To make use of it, put the following macro definition
into the preamble of your document:

\newcommand{\textfplsc}[1]{\bgroup\usefont{T5}{fpl}{m}{sc}#1\egroup}

You can use it like this:

	some text \textfplsc{some text in small caps} some text 

The macro argument should not contain any numbers because they will appear
as oldstyle numbers, but you cannot use oldstyle numbers with other font
shapes in T5 encoding (Vietnamese) yet.  This problem will be fixed in a
future release.


If you have to typeset mathematics, there are very few fonts available:

    * Computer Modern:	do nothing
    * Latin Modern:     \usepackage{lmodern}
    * Palatino:	        \usepackage{mathpazo}
    * Times:    	\usepackage{mathptm}

The other fonts do not support mathematics.

If you are using Windows, you also can use the fonts provided by
Microsoft:

\renewcommand\sfdefault{ma1}  ArialMT           (Arial)
\renewcommand\ttdefault{mcr}  CourierNewPSMT	(Courier)
\renewcommand\rmdefault{lpr}  PalatinoLinotype	(Palatino)
\renewcommand\rmdefault{mns}  TimesNewRomanPSMT	(Times New Roman)
\renewcommand\sfdefault{jth}  Tahoma            (Tahoma)
\renewcommand\sfdefault{jvn}  Verdana           (Verdana)

None of the Microsoft fonts supports mathematics.  Though the quality of 
the fonts is quite high, not much care had been taken in the design of
Vietnamese accents.  See:

	http://vntex.org/fontsamples

Unless someone insists that you use these fonts, you can use
	
  * VnNimbusMonL    instead of CourierNewPSMT    (Courier)
  * VnNimbusSanL    instead of ArialMT           (Helvetica/Arial)
  * VnNimbusRomNo9L instead of TimesNewRomanPSMT (Times/Times New Roman)
  * VnURWPalladioL  instead of PalatinoLinotype  (Palatino)


If you are using plain TeX, you can use plnfss.tex to select fonts.

Instead of 

  \renewcommand\rmdefault{...}
  \renewcommand\sfdefault{...}
  \renewcommand\ttdefault{...}

you have to select fonts like this:

  \setrmdefault{...}
  \setsfdefault{...}
  \setttdefault{...}

See the plnfss documentation for more details.


III. Known Problems
*******************

* To use amsart.cls (and other AMS LaTeX document classes) with Unicode you
  must add the following lines right before `\begin{document}':

    \def\firstofone#1{#1}
    \let\uppercase\firstofone
    \let\MakeUppercase\firstofone

  This completely disables LaTeX's uppercasing commands which might cause
  bad secondary effects.  Note that this problem is not specific to
  Vietnamese but affects any multibyte encoding.

* In order to use VnTeX with Prosper, you have to install

     http://vntex.org/download/vntex-support/prosper-vn.zip

* In order to use VnTeX with Foiltex, you have to install

     http://vntex.org/download/vntex-support/foiltex-vn.zip

* If have an old version of LaTeX which does not support utf8, you have to
  use ucs.sty.  If ucs.sty is not present on your system you can install 

     http://vntex.org/download/vntex-support/ucs-vn.zip

  We keep this file as long as ucs is unmaintained.  If a maintainer is
  found you better download a fresh ucs distribution from the original site.

  This is a small subset of the ucs package which supports Vietnamese only.
  You can invoke it with \usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}.

  Instead of installing ucs we recommend to update LaTeX.  The latest version
  can be downloaded from

     ftp://dante.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/base.zip  (Germany)
     ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/base.zip    (United Kingdom)
     ftp://tug.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/base.zip    (USA)