texi2dvi changes the behavior of ~

[Akim Demaille]

Hi all,

texi2dvi has code that looks like this:

  # we'd like to handle arbitrary input file names, especially
  # foo~bar/a~b.tex, since Debian likes ~ characters.
  if $catcode_special; then
    # $normaltilde is just to reduce line length in this source file.
    # The idea is to define \normaltilde as a catcode other ~  
character,
    # then make the active ~ be equivalent to that, instead of the  
plain
    # TeX tie.  Then when the active ~ appears in the filename, it will
    # be expanded to itself, as far as \input will see.  (This is the
    # same thing that texinfo.tex does in general, BTW.)
    normaltilde="${escape}catcode126=12 ${escape}def$ 
{escape}normaltilde{~}"
    cmd="$cmd '$normaltilde${escape}catcode126=13 ${escape}let~ 
\normaltilde '"
  fi

which is enabled by default (catcode_special=true), therefore, a call  
such as:

        texi2pdf foo.tex

actually calls something like

	pdflatex '\catcode126=12 \def\normaltilde{~}\catcode126=13 \let~ 
\normaltilde ' '\input' foo.tex

As a result:

> $ cat foo.tex
> \documentclass{article}
> \begin{document}
> a~b
> \end{document}
> $ pdflatex '\catcode126=12 \def\normaltilde{~}\catcode126=13 \let~ 
> \normaltilde ' '\input' foo.tex
> This is pdfTeX, Version 3.141592-1.40.3 (Web2C 7.5.6)
> entering extended mode
> LaTeX2e <2005/12/01>
> Babel <v3.8h> and hyphenation patterns for english, usenglishmax,  
> dumylang, noh
> yphenation, arabic, basque, bulgarian, coptic, welsh, czech, slovak,  
> german, ng
> erman, danish, esperanto, spanish, catalan, galician, estonian,  
> farsi, finnish,
>  french, greek, monogreek, ancientgreek, croatian, hungarian,  
> interlingua, ibyc
> us, indonesian, icelandic, italian, latin, mongolian, dutch, norsk,  
> polish, por
> tuguese, pinyin, romanian, russian, slovenian, uppersorbian,  
> serbian, swedish,
> turkish, ukenglish, ukrainian, loaded.
> (./foo.tex (/opt/local/share/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/article.cls
> Document Class: article 2005/09/16 v1.4f Standard LaTeX document class
> (/opt/local/share/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/size10.clo)) (./foo.aux)  
> [1{/opt/lo
> cal/share/texmf/fonts/map/pdftex/updmap/pdftex.map}] (./foo.aux) )</ 
> opt/local/s
> hare/texmf-dist/fonts/type1/bluesky/cm/cmr10.pfb>
> Output written on foo.pdf (1 page, 4604 bytes).
> Transcript written on foo.log.
> $ pdftotext foo.pdf
> $ cat foo.txt
> a˜b
>
> 1

i.e., the tilda, which is a nonbreakable space, becomes visible.  This  
is especially visible when using hyperref's autoref feature which  
generate "section~\ref{sec.foo}" for "\autoref{sec.foo}".

How is this code expected to disable the magic tricks it plays with ~?

Thanks in advance.