[tex-live] TL2004: Technical problems and testing

[Petr Olsak]

On Wed, 12 May 2004, Karl Berry wrote:

>     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.

cp --help is a subjet of user interface. IMHO, TeX has no user interface,
it is only convertor or calculator (as I mentioned formerly).
Locales are support for applications where user interface is implemented,
no for convertors with well defined input and output such as TeX.

I an not the advocate of the following concept:

LC_ALL=cs tex
Toto je TeX, verze 3.14159 (Web2C ...)
**\aaa
! Nedefinovana ridici sekvence.
<*> \aaa
?
*\end
Zadna strana na vystupu
Zaznam o behu je zapsan do texput.log

I am happy if TeX deals the same output to tty/log everytime.

Petr Olsak