unicode

.. _tex-unicode:

####### unicode #######

The unicode extension implements several macros for generating character from their unicode code points: the standard \char control sequence, plus the non-standard \U{} and \unicode{} macros.

.. note::

The \U and \char commands are new in version 4.

The \char command must be followed by a number giving the unicode code point for the desired character. As in actual TeX, that number can be in hexadecimal if preceded by a quotation mark ("), or octal if preceded by a single quote ('), or by a base-10 number, or by a backtick (:literal:```) followed by a character or single-character control sequence. For example,

.. code-block:: latex

\char65 \char"41 \char'101 \charA \char\A

all produce the letter A.

The \unicode command takes an argument that is either a base-10 number or a hexadecimal number preceded by an x. You can specify the height and depth of the character (the width is determined by the browser), and the default font from which to take the character, using optional bracketed arguments.

Examples:

.. code-block:: latex

\unicode{65}                        % the character 'A'
\unicode{x41}                       % the character 'A'
\unicode[.55,0.05]{x22D6}           % less-than with dot, with height .55em and depth 0.05em
\unicode[.55,0.05][Geramond]{x22D6} % same taken from Geramond font
\unicode[Garamond]{x22D6}           % same, but with default height, depth of .8em,.2em

Once a size and font are provided for a given unicode point, they need not be specified again in subsequent \unicode{} calls for that character.

The result of \unicode{...} will have TeX class ORD (i.e., it will act like a variable). Use \mathbin{...}, \mathrel{...}, etc., to specify a different class.

Note that a font list can be given in the \unicode{} macro. If not is provided, MathJax will use its own fonts, if possible, and then the default font list for unknown characters if not.

.. note::

In version 2, you could configure the default font to be used for \unicode characters if one wasn't given explicitly. This has not been implemented in version 3.

Finally, the \U command takes an argument that is a hexadecimal number giving the unicode code point for the desired character. Unlike \char and \unicode, the resulting character is inserted back into the TeX input string and processed by the TeX interpreter, so \U{5C}sum would be equivalent to \sum since the backslash is U+005C.

This extension is loaded automatically when the :ref:tex-autoload extension is used. To load the unicode extension explicitly, add '[tex]/unicode' to the load array of the loader block of your MathJax configuration, and add 'unicode' to the packages array of the tex block.

.. code-block:: javascript

window.MathJax = { loader: {load: ['[tex]/unicode']}, tex: {packages: {'[+]': ['unicode']}} };

Alternatively, use \require{unicode} in a TeX expression to load it dynamically from within the math on the page, if the :ref:tex-require extension is loaded.

.. _tex-unicode-commands:

unicode Commands

The unicode extension implements the following macros: \char, \U, \unicode

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