Re: XeTeX encoding problem

[Karl Berry]

    it means that you want to use native UTF-8 support in my humble opinion.

Not necessarily.  The problem isn't encodings, it's fonts.  The two
things are intimately and fundamentally tied together, and that cannot
be escaped.

By switching to native UTF-8, the support in texinfo.tex for characters
outside the base font is lost, as far as I can see.  Yes, you get some
characters "for free" (the ones in the lmodern*.otf fonts now being
loaded instead of the traditional cm*) but you also lose some characters
(the ones that aren't in lmodern).

    (something like ``Table of Contents'' broken etc.)

That can be fixed in other ways, without resorting to native UTF-8.

    CJK characters can not be used without native UTF-8 support.

They still won't work without loading a font that has them (at the right
time, without interfering with other fonts already loaded, etc.).  Not
simple.  There are no CJK characters in lmodern, unless I'm totally
missing them.

Trying to write code to automatically load fonts per Unicode block (or
some such) seems like a horrendously difficult problem.  Nothing in the
TeX world has solved it, to my knowledge.

Anyway, it's up to Gavin whether to install your patch.  I don't have
strong feelings about it.  Just pointing out that there are both gains
and losses.

Best,
Karl