[tex-live] Technical showstoppers for TL2003

[Petr Olsak]

On Sun, 14 Sep 2003, Vladimir Volovich wrote:

> in the above example, the portable way to write to file would be:
>
> abcd\textbackslash eacute \'e \textasciicircum \textasciicircum ef
>
> where \textbackslash typesets the `\' character and \textasciicircum
> typesets the `^' character. when this is read back by TeX, it will
> typeset verbatim what was between the \startbuffer and \stopbuffer.
> and it is not hard to do that at the macro level...
> (yes, here we use one escape character - `\').

let we have the text:

^ ^ef

Vladimir suggests to convert it to:

\textasciicircum  \textasciicircum ef

(note two spaces after first \textasciicircum).
There is no way to typeset this text correctly with
the default \catcode of the space.

It seems as unreal example. The more realistic example is:

,,quoted text`` next text.  (the ,, and `` note single chars in this example)

can be converted to:

\leftczechqq quoted text\rightczechqq  next text.

and the space is lost during the .toc reading because the
\catcode of space has the value 10 in this situation.

Please, stop saying about LICR. IMHO, this is bad idea.

If I am working with 8-bit, I need to save in 8-bit in \write files.
If I am working with UTF-8, I need to save in UTF-8 in \write files.
If I am designing my own verbatim macro which reads back the \write
files, I need the simplicity.

The simplicity is very important argument.

--------------------------------------

Does anybody know why the encTeX is not included in TL8?
encTeX solves all these problems mentioned in this thread.

Best regards

Petr Olsak