At 18:31 +0000 2001/02/14, David Carlisle wrote: >But 8bit encodings have never been even remotely like that. >A "natural" system designed for 8bit encodings would have some >sensible way of mapping different input encodings. ... >Similarly the difficulty of producing hyphenation tables that work with >different 8bit font encodings. (Not so much the perceived difficulty of >distributing such a thing, suitable macros could fix that, more the >impossibility of sharing the tables at tex's inner level) What about making a version of TeX that is 32-bit internally; then one hooks up a preprocessor that translates files into 32-bit char's before handing them over to TeX? -- Then base LaTeX on that one. The thing is that it is relatively easy to get a stable version, and one get some extra time waiting for a more advanced successor to TeX. Hans Aberg