[TxMt] LaTeX: feature suggestions for the LaTeX bundle.

[Allan Odgaard]

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?