[OS X TeX] Input encoding question
Peter Dyballa
Peter_Dyballa at Web.DE
Fri Feb 20 08:49:09 CET 2009
Am 20.02.2009 um 08:07 schrieb Axel E. Retif:
> 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.
Just because *some* software can handle it, it's not reason enough.
Files grow big because some (statistically: quite all) characters are
represented by more than one byte, software needs to extra-process
these byte sequences. And LaTeX and ConTeXt are mostly 8 bit
applications with a 7 bit core.
>>
>> 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?
Yes. Because the file that describes this LaTeX encoding is part of a
TeX distribution. An editor that does not support a LaTeX encoding is
no "TeX editor."
> I mean, even if LaTeX typesets your document OK, how will your text
> look in future editors?
Mostly: readable. Otherwise you wouldn't know what you started to
write one or two hours (days, weeks, months, ...) ago.
> Or maybe I'm not understanding the encoding question right?
Maybe it'll help you to write (by copy&paste for example) a TeX
document with Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic (all are 7 or 8 bit
encodings) content in UTF-8 encoding and then LaTeX or ConTeXt it and
make it appear on paper or on screen as it should be.
--
Greetings
Pete
There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX.
We don't believe this to be a coincidence.
- Jeremy S. Anderson
More information about the macostex-archives
mailing list