[tex-live] Technical showstoppers for TL2003

[Petr Olsak]

On Mon, 15 Sep 2003, Vladimir Volovich wrote:

> "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

Where is the simplicity?

> however, there are no problems... see how LaTeX works and solves all
> this at the MACRO level without any non-standard hacks like encTeX.

I am very sorry that my email is now not concerned to the primary subject
of this thread. But I can't leave the sentence: "encTeX is non-standard
hack" without my answer because there is a danger that many tex-live@
readers can reject the encTeX without getting more information about it.

IMHO, encTeX is the natural extension of TeX. I mean that if Knuth were
managed and developed his TeX more long time then he would be adopted the
similar extension as encTeX into his program.

On the opposite hand: the LaTeX is good example of the hack because many
things are solved on the boundary of the possibility and unpossibility.
There exists LaTeX developer(s), who agrees that LaTeX is a hack. The
simplicity is lost: this is very big problem of this macro package.

Best regards

Petr Olsak