[XeTeX]   in XeTeX

[Chris Travers]

On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 2:35 AM, Philip TAYLOR <P.Taylor at rhul.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>
> Chris Travers wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 2:24 AM, Petr Tomasek<tomasek at etf.cuni.cz>  wrote:
>>
>>> Using different color.
>>>
>> Do we really want to tie XeTeX users to a small number of editors?
>
> No.  But nor do we want to preclude the possibility of
> someone taking UTF-8 containing these "magic" characters
> from somewhere and pasting it into a XeTeX document.
> So it is essential that we support these magic characters
> in some way.  In the long term, enhancements to the
> XeTeX engine could achieve this in a far more elegant
> way by (for example) extending the number of \catcode s
> to 256 (or 65536, or 4294967296, or 2&<whatever>) to
> accommodate the extended semantics that Unicode encapsulates.
> But in the short term, all that is necessary is to make
> these characters active, and to provide definitions (compatible
> with all major dialects of TeX) that implement their
> semantics.  They are then no more troublesome than
> any of the sixteen or so currently reserved characters
> when it comes to transput : that is why \unexpanded exists.
>
I get worried when reserved characters are not visually differentiated
in an ordinary text editor from non-reserved ones.

I think it's far better if one can have packages which enable or
disable these specific characters for those who want them.  However,
don't make me open a hex editor to see why a space is breaking or not.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers