Re: [9fans] [RFC] fonts and unicode/utf [TeX]

[tlaronde@polynum.com]

On Sat, Jun 25, 2011 at 11:11:50AM -0400, erik quanstrom wrote:
> On Sat Jun 25 11:01:38 EDT 2011, tlaronde@polynum.com wrote:
> >
> > I mean the .tex file. The font files as seen by TeX are only the metrics
> > tfm, and they are binaries.
>
> so are you planning on hiding this conversion within the tex
> executable or some shell script fronting the executable?
> that would work.  but letting ancient and deprecated
> latin1 escape into editors, &c. would be a mistake.

For the moment I will "hide" strictly nothing in the compiled program.
The only modification is an external choice: that the fonts built
from Adobe PostScript Times-Roman etc. that have only 256 positions
will have in the 128-255 range an "encoding" corresponding to
latin1---while the Cork. aka EC encoding still shipped for historical
reason with distributions of TeX and al. (there is also "8r" encoding
that is latin1 compatible IIRC...) has a not latin1 encoding of
the latin1 characters.

The simplest for a Plan9 user is indeed to access his JIT compiled macro
set (latex(1) is just TeX masquerading behind to know what predigested
version to load using argv[0]) via a script to convert the utf .tex file
to some 8bits characters set before passing this one to TeX.

The correct solution, later, will be to let TeX directly handle utf as
input... but this means not only extending to wydes instead of bytes,
but a heavy lifting for font support too and, if possible, not only
left-to-right direction.

This is why XeTeX comes in the discussion, but with C++ floating
around it, it is not an immediate candidate for Plan9. (And I'm
personnally more keen on having an extended DVI and a dvipdf
driver---because there can be a dvi whatever and there can be a
dvi "standalone" viewer---, than plaguing TeX directly with pdf
whose "interactive" features are growing exponentially with all
the open source solutions lagging far behind Adobe solutions; and I'm
afraid that I will not devote time to support on a "page" interactive
animations, like a paper clip rolling big eyes, even if it is supposed
to sing "la Marseillaise"...)

--
        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                      http://www.kergis.com/
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