[OS X TeX] Input encoding question

[Axel E. Retif]

Dear Richard,

First, thank you for your very thorough explanation in your previous  
email.

On  20 Feb, 2009, at 00:36, Richard Koch wrote:

> PS:
>
> On Feb 19, 2009, at 8:30 PM, Axel E. Retif wrote:
>>
>> I think that by using applemac you're risking some future  
>> incompatibilities ---Apple itself is abandoning the encoding;  
>> please see
>>
>> http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/unicode.html
>
> This is misleading. The linked document is a general description of  
> unicode; it contains the word Macintosh exactly once.

Thank you for clarifying this.

> Obviously Apple and other computer manufacturers have embraced  
> unicode strongly.

Yes, that's for sure. The thing, as you said in your previous mail, is  
which input encoding will we use (UTF-8 or UTF-16); but I think the  
overwhelming preference has been UTF-8.

My point in favor of a utf-8 default is, 1) most of (La)TeX and  
ConTeXt users around the world need more than 127 characters, and we  
are already accustomed to input them directly with either latin1,  
latin9 or utf-8; and 2) most of recent TeX editors (v.gr., TeXmaker,  
TeXworks) have already utf-8 as default.

[...]

> The TeX world is moving toward unicode: see XeTeX and luaTeX and  
> other developments. On the other hand, compatibility with older  
> sources is unusually important in the TeX world, so I expect that a  
> wide range of encodings will work as long as TeX itself survives.

Yes, for sure LaTeX will understand applemac, but the thing is, will  
future TeX editors understand it? I mean, even if LaTeX typesets your  
document OK, how will your text look in future editors? Or maybe I'm  
not understanding the encoding question right?

Best and thank you again.

Axel