[Docutils-users] em-dash and emacs

[David A. <da...@bo...>]

I've been using "--" when I needed an em-dash in my documents for
some time now, though it appears to only work that way in LaTeX and I
now think I was getting an en-dash, needing "---" for LaTeX em-dash(?)

According to the FAQ, I have to use Unicode to insert these characters
in my document, and let docutils know about the input encoding.  Now,
I have to type a lot of em-dashes, but AFAICT the only way to do it on
a standard U.S. (Windows XP) keyboard is by typing ALT+0151.
Furthermore, when I type that into emacs it asks me what encoding I
want (utf-8 is fine, I guess) and then it displays "\227", which is
really awful (I use Lucida Console as my font, FWIW).  When I add
--input-encoding=utf-8 --output-encoding=utf-8 (that's the default
output encoding, I think) to my docutils command-line, I see boxes in
my browser where the em-dashes should be.

I'd love it if docutils would actually interpret "--" and "---" as
LaTeX does, but I'm sure that would be a philosophical hurdle.  Can
anyone give me advice on:

  How to make it easier to type an em-dash
  How to get emacs to display them properly
  How to get docutils to write them properly
  How to get emacs to remember a file's encoding
  Anything else related to this that will make things easier

Thanks,

-- 
Dave Abrahams
Boost Consulting
http://www.boost-consulting.com