Frank wrote -- > > basically what you are saying is that moving text needs to keep information > about its state with it, right? it fortunately doesn't need to keep > information about its input encoding since that got all normalised into the > internal representation but unfortunately you need to keep information about > the encoding used (or rather the encoding intended) > > a bit inconsistent that, isn't it? Not really: since input encoding really does mean just that. Once the text is `inside LaTeX' the input encoding is irrelevant: that is the beauty and strength of the LaTeX text character model. The confusion perhaps comes because part of the `inside of LaTeX' is various external files, .toc, .aux etc. These are unfortunately not internal to TeX, only to LaTeX. The whole concept of `moving argument' arises from this fundamental distinction between TeX and LaTeX: LaTeX, in this sense, is not just a TeX macro package. > but would it help if the language has a tie > to the [font] encoding? Whether the `intended font encoding' should be part of a moving argument leads to an important question. Note the word `intended': will it always be the case that text from a moving argument should be turned into glyphs using the same font encoding as was used for the original text? > so we have to offer a choice, question is, is there a better way to present > it? This is not really an answer but we can certainly provide a better interface than: > \usepackage[T1]{fontenc} ... no, I am not sure what it would be:-). chris