[Tex/LaTex] How to deactivate % as special character

active-characterscharacterstex-core

_{Background: I use LaTeX to display data that are automatically produced. I cannot manually change the raw data (since they are frequently updated).}

_{But this raw text contains LaTeX's special characters (_, &, and %). This makes compilation fail.}

_{I have found in Handling of special LaTeX characters in text how to tell LaTeX to treat _ and & as "regular" characters. However, \catcode`%=12 does not work…}

Question: How to tell LaTeX that the symbol % should be considered as a "regular" character?

Of course, defining this behavior globally would make compilation of many packages fail, so this redefinition should be applicable locally/temporarily (e.g. in an \inputed .tex file).

Best Answer

You can make % punctuation character by

\catcode`\%=12

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Cannot see special character

If you want to use Greek characters in text mode more often, you could consider loading the package textgreek. This is shown in my first version.

The second version is much more elegant and uses the package siunitx. I think, you should get used to this package, as it does a lot of nice work for you.

% arara: pdflatex

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{textgreek}
\usepackage[per-mode=symbol-or-fraction]{siunitx} % for super easy handling of such cases.


  \begin{document}
With textgreek, it looks like 20 \textmu{}g/mL. 

You could also use the package siunitx and write \SI{20}{\micro\gram\per\milli\litre}
  \end{document}

enter image description here

siunitx gives a nicer fitting µ, a nicer (narrow) spacing, corrects your big L to a small l and gives you the possibility to change to a µg ml^-1 version or other things later on.

[Tex/LaTex] How/Where to find such special symbol/character

Those symbols are in IPA:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tipa}

\begin{document}

\textsubbridge{t}\quad
\textyogh\quad
\textesh\quad
\textdyoghlig\quad
\textteshlig

\end{document}

enter image description here

For the last one you might prefer

\texttoptiebar{t\textesh}

enter image description here

The characters are available in some OpenType fonts, for example FreeSerif. Compile the following with XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{FreeSerif}

\begin{document}

\textsubbridge{t}\quad
\textyogh\quad
\textesh\quad
\textdyoghlig\quad
\textteshlig\quad
\texttoptiebar{t\textesh}

\end{document}

enter image description here

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Cannot see special character

[Tex/LaTex] How/Where to find such special symbol/character

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