[tex-live] Technical showstoppers for TL2003

[Vladimir Volovich]

"PO" == Petr Olsak writes:

 PO> let we have the text:

 PO> ^ ^ef

 PO> Vladimir suggests to convert it to:

 PO> \textasciicircum \textasciicircum ef

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

no - it was only a simplified example. if you had looked at how LaTeX
does this, you would had found out that what i suggested is workable
solution. The above should be changed to:

\IeC{\textasciicircum} \IeC{\textasciicircum}ef

If you'd like to know what \IeC macro is, look at LaTeX...

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

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

 PO> can be converted to:

 PO> \leftczechqq quoted text\rightczechqq next text.

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

again, this will be written as
\IeC{\leftczechqq}quoted text\IeC{\rightczechqq} next text

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

Please, stop being ignorant and writing about something you didn't
study first. It's a bad idea.

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

 PO> The simplicity is very important argument.

i don't know why we need encTeX when we have omega which is much more
powerful in handling UTF-8.

what we were talking about is EXPLICITLY the question whether to
output some characters in 8-bit form instead of ^^-notation. we were
NOT talking about any re-encoding like encTeX or TCX does.

 PO> --------------------------------------

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

that's not a question to me...

however, there are no problems... see how LaTeX works and solves all
this at the MACRO level without any non-standard hacks like
encTeX. 8-bit texts which are written to files (e.g. AUX) are saved in
portable and robust LICR notation which is independent on any font and
input and font encodings.

Best,
v.