[tex-live] Technical showstoppers for TL2003

[Thomas Esser]

> I am not getting a feeling of consensus on this issue. If Vladimir, Petr
> and Fabrice cannot agree on a solution, what is to be done?
> 
> can someone tell me where MikTeX and teTeX stand on this?

teTeX since version 2.0 (released early in Feb. 2003) has the changed
behaviour:

  \newwrite\x
  \immediate\openout\x = xfoo.out
  \immediate\write\x{helloäöüß}
  \immediate\closeout\x
  \bye

This puts
  hello^^e4^^f6^^fc^^df
into xfoo.out, independent from the locale. Nobody has complained about
it so far...

Thomas