[texhax] Difficulty with using PCTeX to compile a .txt file in Unicode

[Axel E. Retif]

On  24 Oct, 2009, at 11:39, Oleg Katsitadze wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 24, 2009 at 10:55:27AM -0500, Axel E. Retif wrote:
>> On  24 Oct, 2009, at 09:22, Adam M. Goldstein wrote:
>>> without the use of additional packages, TeX and
>>> LaTeX will only process ASCII text. UTF8 won't work either.
>>
>> Yes, of course you're right ---you would have to put
>>
>> \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
>
> Note that UTF8 is backwards-compatible with ASCII, so if the text is
> strictly ASCII saving it as UTF8 will produce an ASCII text file
> (except maybe for the dumb BOM on Windows).

That is the case with Dhrymes' sample file, identified by BBEdit as  
UTF-16 Little-Endian.

>> in your preamble (is there support for utf16? I don't find anything)
>
> While possible (probably), a package would not be sufficient, it would
> have to be done at the format file level or (even better) TeX engine
> level, because in UTF16 all characters (even ASCII) are at least a
> two-byte word.

I see. Thanks for the explanation.

Best,

Axel