[tex-live] Technical showstoppers for TL2003

[Petr Olsak]

On Mon, 15 Sep 2003, Vladimir Volovich wrote:

> with encTeX, you put the input encoding into the format file. so the
> TeX engine is only able to process documents in ONE FIXED INPUT
> ENCODING without regeneration of the format file. do you find it
> elegant and useful? i don't. in my opinion, encTeX is totally useless,

This is not true! Please, if you are argumenting against encTeX, do not
write nonsenses. Macro packages (like inputenc) can read the encoding and
is_printable setting everytime via encTeX primitives and they can set
new values. The whole engine co-operates with the present-day TCX tables.

> 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.

encTeX solves the is_printable reading/setting too.
This was a reason, why I mentioned it in this thread.

On the other hand I know that there is no time to do a big changes in TeX
sources before TL8 release. I accept the Karl's suggestion about a little
change in texmfmp.c source only.

Best regards

Petr Olsak