Adding two diacritical points under letters

Question

I'm working on a glossary with some transliterated Persian, Urdu and Arabic. Conforming with earlier publications, I sometimes need to use two diacritical dots under letters such as s, z and t. I've tried to solve this with \ooalign, inspired by the answer given here. I can now place two dots below these letters, but the problem is that as a result the spacing between letters is no longer pleasant. MWE:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\begin{document}
\newcommand{\dd}[1]{%
    \ooalign{#1\cr\hfil\raisebox{-.5ex}{..}\hfil}%
    }
\Huge{%
\d{H}={a}fi\dd{z}, Shams-ud-D={\i}n Mu\d{h}ammad
Other examp\dd{l}e.%
}
\end{document}

This yields:

How do I fix the letter spacing?

plante · Answer 1 · 2022-06-28T10:05:19.730

6

Mimicking the plain definition for \d works well.

\makeatletter
\newcommand{\dd}[1]{{\o@lign{\relax#1\crcr \hidewidth\ltx@sh@ft{-1ex}.\kern-.1em.\hidewidth}}}
\makeatother
{\Huge
    \d{H}={a}fi\dd{z}, Shams-ud-D={\i}n Mu\d{h}ammad
Other examp\dd{l}e.%

}

Also, note that \Huge doesn't take an argument, but is a font switch command.

edited Jun 28 '22 at 10:05

answered Jun 28 '22 at 09:59

plante

1,349

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 28 '22 at 10:02

\ooalign is not the right tool.

\documentclass{article}
\DeclareRobustCcommand{\dd}[1]{%
  \vtop{%
    \offinterlineskip
    \ialign{%
      ##\cr % template
      #1\cr % top line
      \noalign{\vspace{0.25ex}}% space
      \hidewidth.\kern-0.1em.\hidewidth\cr % dots
    }%
  }%
}
\begin{document}
\d{H}={a}fi\dd{z}, Shams-ud-D={\i}n Mu\d{h}ammad
Other examp\dd{l}e.
\end{document}

Bernard · Answer 3 · 2022-06-28T19:09:31.603

5

With a very simple modification of your code:

    \documentclass{article}
    \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\begin{document}

\newcommand{\dd}[1]{%
 \ooalign{#1\cr\hfil\raisebox{-.5ex}{\clap{..}}\hfil}%
    }

\Huge{%
\d{H}\={a}fi\dd{z}, Shams-ud-D\={\i}n Mu\d{h}ammad

Other examp\dd{l}e.%
}

\end{document}

edited Jun 28 '22 at 19:09

answered Jun 28 '22 at 10:10

Bernard

271,350

score 5 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 28 '22 at 10:42

5

Totally different approach: Why not simply make use of Unicode's U+0323 COMBINING DOT BELOW and U+0324 COMBINING DIAERESIS BELOW?

Ḥāfiz̤, Shams-ud-Dīn Muḥammad

Other exampl̤e

answered Jun 28 '22 at 10:42

Ingmar

6,690
5
26
47

1

(note that this only works in Unicode engines -- unless/until the LaTeX team decide to add support for it, but it doesn't look like the case now. The OP presumably is using pdflatex (or copy pasting some wrong code that use inputenc)) – user202729 Jun 29 '22 at 06:08
2

Yes, obviously this would require using either LuaLaTeX or XeTeX. That said, there is generally very little reason not to in the first place, particularly when support vor “exotic” languages or writing systems might be required. – Ingmar Jun 29 '22 at 06:12
@user202729 I believe the LaTeX team has said that Unicode combining characters are not going to work in 8-bit TeX, due to inherent architectural limitations. – Davislor Jun 29 '22 at 07:47
Ah right, only Unicode characters that already have the diacritic precomposed works. – user202729 Jun 29 '22 at 09:03

Adding two diacritical points under letters

4 Answers4