[XeTeX] Making a .fmt file using XeTeX

[Stephen Moye]

Now for something very strange.

I'm having my perl script insert the '%&encoding=UTF-8 Unicode' line at the top of the file. When I run an old TeX file through the script, the resulting new TeX file does not TeX correctly -- the accents are missing or wrong. After a good deal of fevered (literally, I came down with the flu yesterday) experimentation, I discovered that if, in the perl-generated file, I delete the space between '8' and 'Unicode' and type in a new space from the keyboard thus replacing the old space, the resulting file TeXs correctly. I don't know what else to try changing in the script.

I've tried looking up something about how encodings are specified to TeXShop, but so far have come up dry. It would be nice if there were an alternative --something like '%&encoding=UTF-8-Unicode' or '%&encoding=UTF-8Unicode'. I've tried them and they don't work. I tried '\ ' in the perl script, but that didn't work either.

Stumped.

Stephen