[tex-live] Technical showstopper

[Karl Berry]

    \section{L'édition}
    Bla bla bla ...
    \end{document}

    You will end up with a
    ^^e9 instead of a é in the .toc file, and that's what French users will get in
    their documents.

So, in past versions of TL, the 0xe9 single character was written to the toc
using these options instead of the four ASCII characters ^^e9?

    - we have a texlive 8 whose behaviour is different for the texlive 7 is
    this aspect, that should be at least stated

I must be missing something.  I just tried it (on Linux), and the
resulting .toc file for *both* TL7 and the current TL2003 contains is
this:

\contentsline {section}{\numberline {1}L'\'edition}{1}

That is, the pre-accented e has been changed into the \' accent control
sequence.

I did not use any options when running latex, and used the file exactly
as you sent it (except I added the missing } on the \begin{document :).
(It's /tmp/testfr.tex on tug.org.)

?

    - if tex pretends to be eight bits compatible, I don't see any point
    in keeping this ^^ notation. If it reads 0xe9 in a file, it should
    be able to write it too.

It should be able to, but it seems to me it should not do so by
default; that would invalidate the TeXbook, not to mention fail the trip
test.  Doing so with a cmdline option specified or a package loaded
seems ok.

However, in terms of TL2003 production at this late date, the crucial
question is not what the ideal behavior should be, but what has changed
wrt 2003.

k