[tex-k] Re: TAB at the end of 1st line %&

[Staszek Wawrykiewicz]

The observed bevaviour was: the first line of TeX file like
%&latex<TAB><NL>
cannot be parsed properly.

Fabrice Popineau wrote:
> As I understand it, tcx files are an easy way to let your local TeX
> process a file typed in on a different machine with a different
> locale. 

Not only, it is (as far) the best way to translate input into internal
TeX encoding and back for the whole TeX family (not only LaTeX). 
It works quite well even for metapost. 
You can try in the LaTeX file
%& --translate-file=il1-t1
instead of using
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
and you will have proper messages, toc, index, etc. in latin1 world.

FP> Along the same line, I really really wonder if it is such a good idea
FP> to let tcx files translate filenames. 

Yes, I see that as the second drawback (after parsing superflous whitespace).
It would be yet stupid idea to use such filenames for TeX.

Karl Berry wrote:
> I thought tcx files had been disabled never to return?

Sorry, no comments. It was discussed heavily 3 years ago...

Olaf Weber wrote
> The first-line parsing is very primitive and doesn't strip superflous
> whitespace.

Reasonable answer. Thanks Olaf. That's all for this discussion.

-- 
Staszek Wawrykiewicz
email: staw@gust.org.pl