[tex-live] Re: UTF-8 support

[Petr Olsak]

On 22 Jan 2003, Janusz S. Bień wrote:

>
> On Mon, 20 Jan 2003  Petr Olsak <olsak@math.feld.cvut.cz> wrote:
>
> > Dear TeXlive and web2c implementors,
> >
> > I released the second version of my encTeX -- the extension of TeX for
> > input re-encoding.
>
> A support for UTF-8 is already provided by ucs.sty available from
> CTAN. I think it should be included on the next CD.

NO!!

The UTF-8 support cannot be 100% perfect, if you realise it only at macro
level. I have made my own macros for UTF-8 support before my second
version of encTeX and I know very deep all problems connected with thist
task.

Please, don't assume that all UTF-8 codes on input side and on
the output to \write files can be implemented by macros.

People are using his own macros with \catcodes, \uccodes etc. set to
idividual letters and they do the \futurelet of the next character.
If you don't use encTeX, you are not able to do these tasks in normal
sense.

> As for encTeX, I think it can have some future if you make it an
> upward-compatible extension of TCX tables. Then you should try to
> persuade e-TeX authors to merge encTeX and e-TeX together.

The upward-compatibility of TCX tables are possible. The TCX tables are
not the standard TeX internals thus the current version of encTeX
does not solves this problem. But I have changed one's mind about it and I
am ready to help TeX implementors to implement encTeX which is
upward-compatible of TCX tables.

Regards

Petr Olsak