At 16:30 +0100 2001/02/11, Frank Mittelbach wrote:
> wouldn't it be better if the internal LaTeX representation would be Unicode
> in one or the other flavor?
>
>in other words, instead of using \"a as the representation for umlaut-a use
>something like
>
>   \unicode{00e4}
>or \uc00e4        % (as a command)
>or \utfviii{...}
...
> - however, not clear is that the resulting names are easier to read, eg
>   \unicode{00e4} viz \"a.
...
> - the current latex internal representation is richer than unicode for good
>   or worse, eg \" is defined individually as representation for accenting the
>   next char, which means that anything \"<Bass-char-in-the-internal-reps> is
>   automatically also a member of it, eg \"g.
...
>comments?

There is this variation that one defines \u00e4 commands for Unicode
compatibility. Then in some environment, one defines " as a letter, with
  \let\"a=\u00E4
etc., and in other environments \" is the usual control sequence.

Thus, if one is in the environment where " is a letter, if some combination
\x does not work, one will know that the Unicode version is not available,
and one has to invoke another environment to handle that.

  Hans Aberg