[XeTeX] Whitespace in input

[mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca]

On Mon, 14 Nov 2011, Philip TAYLOR wrote:
> > 2. Inevitably, people will include invalid characters in TeX input; and
> > U+00A0 is an invalid character for TeX input.
>
> Firstly (as is clear from the list on which we are discussing
> this), we are not discussing TeX but XeTeX.  Secondly, even

XeTeX is a TeX engine.  Obviously, it is free to define its own input
format, and that format already differs from other TeX engines by (for
instance) allowing some Unicode code points outside the 7-bit range.  But
I still see XeTeX as a version of TeX, not something completely different,
and it's appropriate for expectations we might have about TeX - for
instance, the expectation that formatting commands are visible and the
"non-breaking space" formatting command is ~ - to also apply to XeTeX
where they are appropriate.

> if we were discussing TeX, on what basis do you claim that
> U+00A0 is invalid ?  And if you assert that it is, /a priori/,

It's invalid if XeTeX says it is invalid, and I think XeTeX should say
it is invalid.

-- 
Matthew Skala
mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca                 People before principles.
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/