[tex-live] cp8bit and old bugs

[Petr Olsak]

On Thu, 18 Sep 2003, Vladimir Volovich wrote:

> "PO" == Petr Olsak writes:
>
>  PO> LaTeX users does not need to read the overfull \hbox messages (in
>  PO> log and in terminal) in his own language? Texts in these messages
>  PO> are not readable if ^^af sequences are used here.
>
>  PO> If terminal is able to show 8-bit letters in choosen language
>  PO> then it is more usable to configure TeX with 8-bit output.
>
> i'm not against allowing 8-bit output to terminal, log and files,
> because it is not contradicting the TeX specification by Knuth.
>
> however, one should understand that such 8-bit text is not always
> useful, because of the difference in input encoding of the document
> and font encoding used (which is what the overfull \hbox messages
> appear in).

This is not exactly true. The overfull messages (and all others messages)
are converted by xchr vector (this vector can be set by TCX or enctex).
It means: dvi encoding can be different from terminal font encoding.
If the xord/xchr is set properly, you can read overfull messages without
problems.

Because xord vector has to be set as inversion of xchr, you can see
that the reencoding only by inputenc at expand processor level need
not be the best choice.

> in many cases this 8-bit text will look like unreadable
> 8-bit garbage, no more better than ^^af sequences.

No many cases, only rare cases... This problem can be occur in 7bit TeX
as well: \hbox to 0pt{text $\varrho$ text} prints the percent character in
overfull message. Important: this problem does not interfere with
legibility of the normal (non math) text.

Best regards

Petr Olsak