2011/11/14 Philip TAYLOR <p.tay...@rhul.ac.uk>: > > > msk...@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca wrote: > > <various points with which I have no reason to disagree at this time, > followed by> > >> 2. Inevitably, people will include invalid characters in TeX input; and >> U+00A0 is an invalid character for TeX input. > > Firstly (as is clear from the list on which we are discussing > this), we are not discussing TeX but XeTeX. Secondly, even > if we were discussing TeX, on what basis do you claim that > U+00A0 is invalid ? And if you assert that it is, /a priori/, > invalid for TeX, and if your reasons for that assertion are > sound, do they also support the assertion that it is, /a priori/, > invalid for XeTeX ? > > Remainder snipped, so that we can debate one point at a time. > I agree with Phil there is nothing in TeX that makes a character invalid a priori. It is made invalid by \catcode.
There are two aspects: A. We are preparing a document to be typeset by TeX. Why on earth should we use only U+00a0 and not ~ which is clearly visible in any editor and has been used for a nonbreakable space for years? Why we use & in \halign or \begin{tabular} and not U+0009? B. TeX is used to typeset data extracted from a database (or similar source) that was not TeX-aware at the first place. Such data can contain not only U+00a0 but even texts as "Tweedledum & Tweedledee", "12 $", "15 %", "#1", whatever. In such a case we must be aware that the input may contain arbitrary characters, even those playing special roles in TeX. We have to handle them properly. > Philip Taylor > > > -------------------------------------------------- > Subscriptions, Archive, and List information, etc.: > http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex > -- Zdeněk Wagner http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/ http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz -------------------------------------------------- Subscriptions, Archive, and List information, etc.: http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex