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Subject:
From:
Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 24 Mar 2009 13:38:52 +0100
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Elie Roux a écrit :
>> By the way, people using XeTeX just encode their sources in utf-8 and skip 
>> loading inputenc, and seem to be happy with it.
>>   
> I think LuaTeX does not target the same users. With luainputenc and
> fontenc working, LuaTeX can start targetting the average user, as the
> old LaTeX documents will be working with LuaLaTeX (if inputenc loads
> luainputenc). XeTeX will never allow old documents to be compiled with
> it, as most input encoding problems have no solution.
> 
Sure. But their is no need to target the average user too early. Leave early
beta-testing to advanced users. luainputenc and a working fontenc for LuaTeX are
very new and quite untested. Don't throw it in the hands of the average user
right know, please wait.

>> So I see no harm in waiting a bit before implementing backward
>> compatibility solutions.
>> 
> And I see no harm in proposing a working LuaLaTeX...

Half-working and quite untested, sorry. I still had no time to look closely at
luainputenc's latest versions, but if I understand correctly how it works, I'm
pretty sure some of my own documents won't comile without modification with it.
(And I'm talking of real-life documents, not specially-forged tricks.)

> Of course, as
> LuaTeX is not stable, LuaLaTeX won't be stable... but remember that
> people call LuaLaTeX with the command "lualatex", so they know what they
> are doing.
> 
And since they know what they are doing, the can just change inputenc into
luainputenc.

By the way, a point I forgot to mention earlier is documentation. Keeping
separate names allows to properly document the current limitations, known issues
and how to solve them, for every individual package, at least during the testing
phase.

> LuaTeX can only write UTF-8, so people needing to write in files in
> 8-bit without LICR (meaning not a lot of people)

Well, not meaning nobody either.

> will have problems if
> they do it in home-made package (I solved the problem for all files
> generated by packages in TeXLive), so the problem concerns noone except
> very advanced TeX users...

I don't think using VerbatimOut or filecontents qualifies as a very advanced TeX
user.

> I know you're one of them, but for the
> average user it will be 99.9999% backward compatible.

I tend to disagree with this value. But only testing will really show if it is
rather 90% or 99.9999%.

> Well, I'm not sure pdfTeX and TeX82 were 100% compatible neither...
> 
Of course they weren't. The question is: concerning the encodings, is it
possible to handle the differences well enough in a macro package so that we can
hide them to the user? Maybe, but I don't think it is already done, sorry.

> Or even better: a warning and the loading of luainputenc. I don't think
> this warning is necessary, but I don't have a strong opinion about it, I
> think it will just be boring for the average user...

Experience proves normal users don't read warnings. (Even when they have
problems.) (Well, it probably holds for most error messages too...)

Manuel.

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