[tex-live] TL2004: Technical problems and testing

Karl Berry karl at freefriends.org
Thu May 13 01:12:37 CEST 2004


    Basically, with plain TeX mode the 8bit stuff should be off.  With
    latex, my understanding is that people want it on, and same for
    context.  

Ohhh, this is yet another wrinkle.  I am not sure at all that it should
depend on the format.  I haven't heard that proposed before.

We need more input. Folks, shall we:

1) keep tty/log output locale-dependent via isprint, as it's always been
   before?  Users and systems then set LC_CTYPE (or whatever) to control it.
   Or:   

2) make -8bit + tcx files affect tty/log output, even when LANG=C?
   Would this perceived to be a general improvement for users? 
   And:

2a) If 2, should we make all the formats the same by default, or turn
   off 8bit tty/log for plain, or only turn on 8bit tty/log for latex?
   (I'm guessing context would also want 8bit tty/log, if latex does.)

Ultimately, I guess I personally don't have strong feelings about it.
It seems desirable to me for all formats to be treated the same.

    You'd have to write a 7bit.tcx that actively suppresses printability
    for all but the range 32..127 inclusive.  Easy to to with the new
    code, but it would have to be done.

Understood.

    There are currently _no_ settings for this in texmf.cnf.

Feasible to add, or not?

I'm imagining something like
translate_file = 7bit.tcx
...
(We wouldn't have any setting in there by default.)


Thanks,
k



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