[tex-live] packages with characters > 127

[Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard]

Karl Berry a écrit :
>     It is done (not the TL09 version, though). The point is, packages using
>     non-ascii characters currently don't take that kind of precautions.
> 
> The point for me is that it shouldn't be up to each individual package
> author.  It should be done at the engine level.
> 
If it were doable, I would perhaps agree, but I hardly see a way. (Except
creating a "bytes mode" in XeTeX/LuaTeX and making it the default, which would
IMO be a greater evil that the small problems we're facing now.)

> The point for me is that the reality is that authors don't stick to
> plain ASCII and there is no real reason they should.  If a French author
> wants to use 8859-15, that should be ok.  We should be liberal in what
> we accept.
> 
Already with current latex/pdftex, they can't without restrictions. The
restrictions will only be slightly higher with LuaTeX/XeTeX.

(If "we" is understood as "TL/ctan2tds", then I agree that we should be liberal
and treat everything as bytes in an encoding-agnostic way and without altering it.)

> The point for me is that, again, with such a basic thing as character
> encoding, there should be no issue of "compatibility" at all.  Authors
> have preferred character sets.  We (implementors) should deal with that,
> not to try ram the One True Way down everyone's throats.
> 
I don't see asking people to declare the encoding they use (or at least whether
bytes mode or some-variant-of-unicode mode is to be used) as an unacceptable
pressure on authors.

> Like line endings ...

Line endings are technically easier :-)

Manuel.