On 3. Dec 2006, at 20:10, Maarten Sneep wrote:
As far as encoding goes, TextMate always presents its commands with utf-8 data, taking care of trying to figure out the encoding of the original file as best it can, and keeping this transparent from the bundle items, which just act on utf-8 data. Allan has talked extensively on his views on the whole encoding issue [2]. Let us know of any particular problems you encounter.
Well, tex was written in the pure 7-bit era, when computing dinosaurs inhabited the face if the internet, there may even have been a version that could run on an EBCDIC system. There are versions coming (xetex, luatex) that will handle utf-8 natively, but at this moment, tex itself is only 8-bit clean. There is an inputenc module that handles utf8, but it is far from complete. Most tex users who want to type characters beyond 7-bit ASCII will rely on one of the 8-bit sets (iso-latin-1 through 15, etc). Since this encodung is given in the source, it is not completely trivial to change this automagically.
Are you saying that the utf-8 input encoding will not support the union of latin-1 through 15? If yes, can you give an example? If no, what is the advantage of sticking to latin-x when utf-8, while still incomplete, can represent the same and more?