Trouble with Czech/Slovak

[Jonathan Kew]

On 12/08/2020 18:30, Norbert Preining wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Aug 2020, Zdenek Wagner wrote:
>> Situation with csplain is quite complex and you should ask Petr Olšák
>> why it is needed. Anyway, if you want to prepare a multilingual
> +1
>
>> languages present unnecessary complexity. I would leave csplain for
>> those who know why they need it for their work and use LuaTeX or XeTeX
>> with polyglossia especially for manuals and such.
> +10000000 strongly supported. cs* binaries are from a different (stone?)
> age and not really necessary on newer systems.
>
> (That said, I am not sure we need to keep cs* forever in TeX Live if it
> only creates problems for us and users)
>

Even if newer Unicode-based engines/fonts/formats are a better way 
forward for the vast majority of users, the long-established cs* formats 
probably need to be kept around in order to support existing documents 
that depend on them.

Whether this requires keeping the corresponding binaries -- which are 
essentially shortcuts for an engine+format that could be called 
explicitly -- may be less clear, but there could easily be workflows 
that rely on calling [pdf]csplain or [pdf]cslatex as a binary and would 
have to be updated if it were removed.

On the other hand, I'd guess that use of cs* formats with luatex or 
xetex engines may be vanishingly rare.

JK