[tex-live] Technical showstoppers for TL2003

[Vladimir Volovich]

"KB" == Karl Berry writes:

 KB> Note that last line, "installer has chosen".
[...]
 KB> What do you think?

i'm inclined to agree. the corresponding section 49 from tex.web is:

=========================
@ The first 128 strings will contain 95 standard ASCII characters, and the
other 33 characters will be printed in three-symbol form like `\.{\^\^A}'
unless a system-dependent change is made here. Installations that have
an extended character set, where for example |xchr[@'32]=@t\.{\'^^Z\'}@>|,
would like string @'32 to be the single character @'32 instead of the
three characters @'136, @'136, @'132 (\.{\^\^Z}). On the other hand,
even people with an extended character set will want to represent string
@'15 by \.{\^\^M}, since @'15 is |carriage_return|; the idea is to
produce visible strings instead of tabs or line-feeds or carriage-returns
or bell-rings or characters that are treated anomalously in text files.
                                                                                                   
Unprintable characters of codes 128--255 are, similarly, rendered
\.{\^\^80}--\.{\^\^ff}.
                                                                                                   
The boolean expression defined here should be |true| unless \TeX\
internal code number~|k| corresponds to a non-troublesome visible
symbol in the local character set.  An appropriate formula for the
extended character set recommended in {\sl The \TeX book\/} would, for
example, be `|k in [0,@'10..@'12,@'14,@'15,@'33,@'177..@'377]|'.
If character |k| cannot be printed, and |k<@'200|, then character |k+@'100| or
|k-@'100| must be printable; moreover, ASCII codes |[@'41..@'46,
@'60..@'71, @'141..@'146, @'160..@'171]| must be printable.
Thus, at least 80 printable characters are needed.
@:TeXbook}{\sl The \TeX book@>
@^character set dependencies@>
@^system dependencies@>
                                                                                                   
@<Character |k| cannot be printed@>=
  (k<" ")or(k>"~")
=========================

perhaps it would be good to be able to make TeX behave according to
this default specified by Knuth, as well as the suggested
"full-8-bit-output".

maybe this can be done via texmf.cnf as a system-wide setting, - then
it will be possible to get whatever behavior one wants by default -
either the one suggested in the TeXbook, or the "full-8-bit-output".
maybe TeX should read some TCX file, say, default.tcx which will be
either cp8bit or will make only the chars in the range 32-126
printable (but it should not be acceptable to use non-ID maps which
contain nontrivial maps as system-wide setting)...

Best,
v.