The following header lines retained to effect attribution:
|Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 14:34:47 +0100
|From: Jan Erik =?iso-8859-1?Q?Mostr=F6m?= <[log in to unmask]>
|Subject: Re: Side remarks about TeX input sequence
|To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L <[log in to unmask]>
|Reply-to: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <[log in to unmask]>
|On 2001-02-15 at 13:37, Hans Aberg <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
|> The idea of open a file as text file does not work well say on a Mac, if
|> you happen to have a mixture say UNIX, MSOS & MacOS files.
|What do you mean?
| jem
|Jan Erik Moström mailto:[log in to unmask]
|Free Elektron http://www.mostrom.pp.se/folk/jem/
UNIX text files have '\n' as line terminators.
MSDOS text files have "\r\n" as line terminators and
'\032' as a file terminator.
MacOS text files have '\r' as line terminators.
The java language specification defines all three character
sequences as line terminators and '\032' (also known as Control-Z)
if it is the last character of the file as a file terminator
(in MSDOS, Control-Z does mark the logical end of a text file).
TeX and LaTeX could take a similar approach:
If the underlaying operating system file is
record structured and therefore is not a
character stream file, then suffix each record
with one of the above line terminator sequences.
Then, in TeX's mouth, any of the line terminator
sequences could be recognized as being a line
terminator and, if Java's example is followed,
then '\032' or end-of-file would mark the logical
end of the input file.
With such processing, it would not matter that one had
transfered a text file between systems with incompatible text
file structures as binary files (e.g., the scientists at
CDF do that frequently then ask me to repair the problem).
Randolph J. Herber, [log in to unmask], +1 630 840 2966, CD/CDFTF PK-149F,
Mail Stop 318, Fermilab, Kirk & Pine Rds., PO Box 500, Batavia, IL 60510-0500,
USA. (Speaking for myself and not for US, US DOE, FNAL nor URA.) (Product,
trade, or service marks herein belong to their respective owners.)
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