David Kastrup writes:

 > >  a) any obvious problems with this approach?
 >
 > Yes.  You guys crack me up.

woah. tell me where to send flowers to when the time has come.

 > The inputenc package is a vital part of
 > LaTeX.

is it? you seem to be very keen on disabling it with your interesting
interpretation of locale support for TeX.

 > If it does not work well without eTeX and complains about this
 > with an appropriate warning, that means that non-eTeX-2 should
 > officially be declared deprecated with due warning time.

it works perfectly without eTeX. what does not work is an extension of the
concept (and one that is not extremely important) and that is what is under
discussion here).

 > My original proposal of doing such a declaration for the next LaTeX
 > release was violently opposed.

you seem to have an understanding of violently that is quite different from
mine. same for the  the word "opposing".
if widely opposing for you means, there are people you do not agree 100% with
your point of view and they express that or dicuss consequences, then i fear
is is not getting you very far if you ever try to work with a team of people.

I wrote in reply to your policy thread:

----------------
   > Well, then they need to get started at some time, and if one never
   > changes  the policies, they won't get started.

  changing policy by supporting the use of etex is one thing and perhaps a good
  thing, the policy of breaking latex use on vanilla tex is a different one

   > That is why I say one should as a first step declare a _policy_, and
   > only at a later time take breakage into account.

  fine, i don't think i ever expressed a problem with that. it seems to me
  (personally) quite a good move to a) encourage people to use etex features in
  packages as well as b) formally suggesting that a complete LaTex installation
  should provide for supporting such a usage.
----------------

 > Now you propose to do something
 > equivalent, only without prior warning, and actually without
 > announcing it anywhere properly?

i don't see that the dicussion concerning LICR used in math and the suggestion
I brought forward for a possible package, are in any conflict with my earlier
statements repeated above.

 - there is no prior warning because there is nothing to warn about yet
 - there is no proper anouncement as there is nothing to announce properly yet

there is however a proposal for a package that would use eTeX features (if
possible)

that clearly raises the importance of formally making an announcement of a
policy change as outlined by me, so what?

it doesn't mean that such a statement needs to go out yesterday just because
you think it should. In fact it should not, as it has a lot of implications
for the good and worse and those need to be thought through further than 3 or
4 angry mails by you

 > So we better come fast to grips about that matter.  Even if it is
 > just a "likely" thing to happen, notice should get out in time.  And
 > that would mean very soon.

i agree with you on the "soon", especially if your information on tetex is
correct, which I assume is. but you could have parted with that earlier

frank