[tex-live] TL2004: Technical problems and testing

[Karl Berry]

    combination of TCX plus -8bit is a better match than locales.

So you are proposing to make those options (-8bit + tcx files) also
affect tty/log file output, instead of using isprint?

I am not sure about this.  Log/tty output was never meant to be
system-independent.

Petr, you say users are confused because when everything is shared, but
the locale is different, the output is different.  I can understand
that, in a way.  But in another way, when the locale is different, why
wouldn't the tty/log output be different?  I mean, you wouldn't expect
"cp --help" to output the same string when LANG=fr and LANG=C.

Also, I suspect some users will be confused if they have LC_CTYPE=C and
get 8-bit output on their terminal *like they never did before*.

On the other hand, perhaps most users would prefer it.  I suppose 8-bit
tty/log output would not actually cause much consternation, anyway,
since it will only come about when the document is using 8-bit
characters anyway.  So I don't object vociferously.

If we do this, we should make sure there is a way to revert back to
7-bit output. I suppose --trans=7bit.tcx would suffice.

One other question: are any settings regarding this available in
texmf.cnf?  I think that could be very useful.  It can be much more
convenient to provide a config file when overrides are necessary than to
change every command line invocation, let alone rebuild formats.