Re: [Texmacs-dev] A few small patches

[Joris van der Hoeven]

Dear Norbert,

On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 05:14:38PM +0100, Norbert Nemec wrote:
> >OK, but then why is it necessary to always include the additional packages?
> >In principle, the catcodes are only included for those symbols which
> >are really needed. By hacking the catcode generation mechanism a bit,
> >it should therefore be easy to adapt you patch in such a wat that
> >fontenc, etc. are only included if really needed.
> >  
> Basically, I did not think it was worth the hassle to program that decision.
> 
> But then, I guess the issue is not really worth the discussion. I doubt 
> that anybody would actually miss fontenc. Most people use CorkT1 or 
> Cyrillic anyway...
> 
> Feel free to drop the line about fontenc from the patch. The remains of 
> the patch should still be valuable enough to include.

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?

Best wishes, --Joris