[latex3-commits] [git/LaTeX3-latex3-latex2e] master: some initial words about UTF-8 (43c948f)

[David Carlisle]

Repository : https://github.com/latex3/latex2e
On branch  : master
Link       : https://github.com/latex3/latex2e/commit/43c948fad622381fee1bf4d7f1c9cd33267ccc81

>---------------------------------------------------------------

commit 43c948fad622381fee1bf4d7f1c9cd33267ccc81
Author: David Carlisle <d.p.carlisle at gmail.com>
Date:   Fri Mar 30 12:26:46 2018 +0100

    some initial words about UTF-8


>---------------------------------------------------------------

43c948fad622381fee1bf4d7f1c9cd33267ccc81
 doc/ltnews28.tex |   35 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 35 insertions(+)

diff --git a/doc/ltnews28.tex b/doc/ltnews28.tex
index 283d156..07df086 100644
--- a/doc/ltnews28.tex
+++ b/doc/ltnews28.tex
@@ -81,6 +81,41 @@ The requirements and the workflow for reporting a bug in the core
 \end{quote}
 and with further details also discussed in~\cite{Mittelbach:TB39-1}.
 
+\section{Default input encoding}
+Since the release of \LaTeXe, \LaTeX\ has supported multiple file encodings
+via the \package{inputenc} package. It used to be necessary to support several
+different input encodings to support different languages. These days Unicode
+and in particular the UTF-8 file encoding can support multiple languages
+in a single encoding. UTF-8 is the default  encoding in most current operating
+systems and editors, and is the only encoding natively supported by
+\hologo{LuaTeX} and \hologo{XeTeX}.
+
+With this release, the default encoding for \LaTeX\ files has been
+changed to UTF-8 if used with classic \TeX\ or PDF\TeX. The
+implementation is essentially the same as the existing UTF-8 support
+from \verb|\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}|.
+
+Documents using non ASCII characters should already be specifying the
+encoding used via an option to the \package{inputenc} package. Such
+documents should not be affected by this change in default.
+
+Some documents would have been using accemted letters \emph{without}
+loading \package{inputenc}, relying on the similarities between the
+input used and the T1 font encoding.  These documents will generate an
+error that they are not valid UTF-8, however the documents may be
+easily processed by specifying the encoding used by adding a line such
+as \verb|\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}|, or adding the new command
+\verb|\UseRawInputEncoding| as the first line of the file. This will
+re-instate the previous default.
+
+\verb|\UseRawInputEncoding| may also be used on the commandline to
+process existing files without requiring the file to be edited\\
+  \verb|pdflatex '\UseRawInputEncoding \input'  file|\\
+will process the file using the previous default encoding.
+
+As usual, this change may also be reverted via the more general
+\package{latexrelease} package mechanism, by speciying a release date
+earlier than this release.
 
 \section{General rollback concept for packages and classes}