Re: [Texmacs-dev] A few small patches

[Norbert Nemec]

Joris van der Hoeven wrote:
> Dear Norbert,
>   
> I am sorry to complexify the discussion for such a seemingly silly thing.
> The point is that I took great pains to be strict on dependencies for
> every single macro or catcode in the LaTeX converter. This is important
> because it reduces the risk of strange errors due to conflicting
> LaTeX packages (such errors really occur, believe me). It also keeps
> the LaTeX conversion very clean.
>
> Therefore, I just want to understand the issue and see if there is
> an easy solution to the problem. What exactly does fontenc do for you?
> If it just allows you to use some non-ASCII characters,
> then maybe we could just use the catcode generation mechanism instead.
> For which characters is fontenc really needed? If I can simply
> drop the line about fontenc, what do we loose?
>   
Actually, I have to reconstruct this myself from the pieces that I 
remember. It has been some time since I created this patch. It was in my 
private repository ever since.

As I see it now, fontenc should actually not be needed at all any more. 
I first put it in to correct the problem which I later solved cleanly by 
completing the translation table for CorkT1.

As it is, the latex converter simply assumes that everything is either 
CorkT1 or cyrillic. The former is now completely converted to catcodes. 
I have no idea about the latter.

This means that exported latex files should never contain any non-ascii 
characters (except in the case that they are defined in the header). 
fontenc should therefore never have any effect at all (except for 
correcting the.. hyphenation within latex).

This is all theory based on vague memories, but it seems to fit together 
now...