Re: [Q] Handle bytes in the range 0x80-0xC0 better when dealing with ISO-IR 196.

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen(a)xemacs.org&gt; writes: If only it were... I am afraid that it is not as easy as that. TeX converts some (but quite often only a subset) utf8 bytes into ^^ab hexadecimal notation, then it cuts the resulting strings short at a fixed distance of characters (which may be in the middle of a ^^ab sequence) to the front and back and uses that for a context to be identified in the file. So what we actually do is cutting away everything that may be part of an incomplete ^^ab sequence at the start and end of the contexts, then encode the result into a raw byte string according to the buffer encoding, then redecode the result into the buffer encoding, chopping away illegal utf-8 characters at the start and end of the context afterwards. And those strings can then be used for lookup in the buffer. The problem is not that TeX's output is binary. The problem is that it is a hodgepodge of binary bytes and transliterated binary bytes (with the transliteration not respecting character boundaries) chopped off somewhere without regard to character boundaries of either originating utf-8 characters or even the transliterations of single bytes of them. While I'll agree immediately that some people ought to get collectively have their heads examined for the combined effects a) coming up with the idea of transliterating "unprintable" characters in the terminal output. b) finding nothing wrong with chopping such a transliteration in half c) letting some bytes through unmolested depending on locale d) making LaTeX deal with characters not in the current locale e) making LaTeX deal with multibyte encodings without TeX itself knowing about or supporting anything but 8-bit characters. The result is a pain to work with. But there are no alternatives, and actually nothing better one can do with the current code base. And the point is that Emacs 22, even Emacs 21 _manage_ dealing with this, even when (in a Latin-1 locale or a LaTeX that believes to be in one) utf-8 sequences get only partly transliterated by TeX and thus fails to be legal utf-8. -- David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum _______________________________________________ XEmacs-Beta mailing list XEmacs-Beta(a)xemacs.org http://calypso.tux.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xemacs-beta