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.)