[XeTeX]   in XeTeX

[Philip TAYLOR]

Chris Travers wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 2:24 AM, Petr Tomasek<tomasek at etf.cuni.cz>  wrote:
>
>> Using different color.
>>
> Do we really want to tie XeTeX users to a small number of editors?

No.  But nor do we want to preclude the possibility of
someone taking UTF-8 containing these "magic" characters
from somewhere and pasting it into a XeTeX document.
So it is essential that we support these magic characters
in some way.  In the long term, enhancements to the
XeTeX engine could achieve this in a far more elegant
way by (for example) extending the number of \catcode s
to 256 (or 65536, or 4294967296, or 2&<whatever>) to
accommodate the extended semantics that Unicode encapsulates.
But in the short term, all that is necessary is to make
these characters active, and to provide definitions (compatible
with all major dialects of TeX) that implement their
semantics.  They are then no more troublesome than
any of the sixteen or so currently reserved characters
when it comes to transput : that is why \unexpanded exists.

Philip Taylor