diff --git a/doc/ltnews28.tex b/doc/ltnews28.tex index 59d5eebbb..0a78141a4 100644 --- a/doc/ltnews28.tex +++ b/doc/ltnews28.tex @@ -91,13 +91,13 @@ \section{UTF-8: the new default input encoding} The first \TeX{} implementations only supported reading 7-bit \acro{ascii} files---any accented or otherwise ``special'' character had to be entered using commands, if it could be represented at -all. For example to obtain an ``a'' one would enter \verb=\"a=, and to +all. For example to obtain an ``\"a'' one would enter \verb=\"a=, and to typeset a ``\ss'' the command \verb=\ss=. Furthermore fonts at that time had 128 glyphs inside, holding the \acro{ascii} characters, some accents to build composite glyphs from a letter and an accent, and a few special symbols such as parantheses, etc. -with 8-bit \TeX{} engines such as \hologo{pdfTeX} this situation changed +With 8-bit \TeX{} engines such as \hologo{pdfTeX} this situation changed somewhat: it was now possible to process 8-bit files, i.e., files that could encode 256 different characters. However, 256 is still a fairly small number and with this limitation it is only possible to encode a @@ -145,11 +145,11 @@ \section{UTF-8: the new default input encoding} often enough will not. In 1992 Ken Thompson and Rob Pike developed the UTF-8 encoding scheme -which allows to encode all Unicode characters within 8-bit sequences +which the encoding of all Unicode characters within 8-bit sequences and over time this encoding has gradually taken over the world, replacing the legacy 8-bit encodings used before. These days all major computer operating systems use UTF-8 to store their files and it -requires some effort to explicitly store files in one of the legay +requires some effort to explicitly store files in one of the legacy encodings. As a result, whenever \LaTeX{} users want to use any accented @@ -191,7 +191,7 @@ \subsection*{Compatibility} \item documents that already had been stored in UTF-8 (whether or not specifying this via \package{inputenc}). \end{itemize} -Only documents that have been stored in a legay encoding and used +Only documents that have been stored in a legacy encoding and used accented letters from the keyboard \emph{without} loading \package{inputenc} (relying on the similarities between the input used and the T1 font encoding) are affected. @@ -316,33 +316,3 @@ \subsection{Obscure overprinting with \pkg{multicol} fixed} \end{thebibliography} \end{document} - - - -Since the release of \LaTeXe, \LaTeX\ has supported multiple file encodings -via the \package{inputenc} package. It used to be necessary to support several -different input encodings to support different languages. These days Unicode -and in particular the UTF-8 file encoding can support multiple languages -in a single encoding. UTF-8 is the default encoding in most current operating -systems and editors, and is the only encoding natively supported by -\hologo{LuaTeX} and \hologo{XeTeX}. - -Documents using non ASCII characters should already be specifying the -encoding used via an option to the \package{inputenc} package. Such -documents should not be affected by this change in default. - - -Some documents would have been using accemted letters \emph{without} -loading \package{inputenc}, relying on the similarities between the -input used and the T1 font encoding. These documents will generate an -error that they are not valid UTF-8, however the documents may be -easily processed by specifying the encoding used by adding a line such -as \verb|\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}|, or adding the new command -\verb|\UseRawInputEncoding| as the first line of the file. This will -re-instate the previous default. - -\verb|\UseRawInputEncoding| may also be used on the commandline to -process existing files without requiring the file to be edited\\ - \verb|pdflatex '\UseRawInputEncoding \input' file|\\ -will process the file using the previous default encoding. -