[XeTeX]   in XeTeX

Keith J. Schultz keithjschultz at web.de
Mon Nov 14 13:19:03 CET 2011


Hi there,

	
Am 14.11.2011 um 11:20 schrieb Chris Travers:

> My $0.02
> 
> In general, I think we are going to get the most mileage by sticking
> with the TeX way of doing things by default.  The nice thing is that ~
> can be turned into a non-active character, and one can set other
> things if they want.  For the record, I think that having non-breaking
> spaces in a plain text document is a bad idea.  I mean, you have
> essentially invisible control characters.  What could possibly go
> wrong?  Hey, it could be worse.  I've seen programs that use "magic
> comments."
> 
> As long as one can make other characters active instead, I see no
> reason to worry about this.
> 
> But the point is that when I am debugging a TeX file I want:
> 1)  To be able to use an editor of my choice and
> 2)  To be able to see clearly what is going on.
> 
> The fact that Python, for example treats whitespace as semantically
> meaningful and hence treats tabs and spaces as semantically different
> is a big strike against that language, for example, from a semantic
> clarity perspective despite the fact that this was ironically a
> decision that was made in order to support semantic clarity.
	Well, a Tab an several spaces are semantically different!
	How much space is a tab character give you!
> 
> TeX files are never simple plain text files, and I don't think we
> should pretend that they are.
	Well, it depends if you mean "plain text" file or "plain text file".
	What does the definition/standard of TeX says it takes as input.
	Things where a lot easier when TeX came to life and the definition
	of a plain text file, also!

regards
	Keith.



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