pdftex manual

[Jaroslav Snajdr]

On Wed, 6 May 1998, Frank Mittelbach wrote:

> this is most likely because this localization doesn't use the official
> latex2e interfaces but lower-level private definitions.

We use the official interfaces everywhere they are available. But some
things must be hacked, e.g., LaTeX does not provide any pleasant way to
change \uc/lc/sfcodes when switching encodings: in IL2, on positions 254
and 255 there are Czech quotes, which deserve \sfcode=0, and in T1 there
are some German letters---\sfcode=1000. It can be done in argument of
\DeclareFontEncoding, but while it is prohibited to change t1enc.def, we
must make a subtle redefinition of \DeclareFontEncoding to enforce the
right \...codes when switching back to T1 from something else. And this
was just one example.

> in that case the only chance for a portable document is to use an
> official latex2e and not one that claims to be LaTeX2e but hacks the
> interfaces and "enhances" the code while sacrifying portability.

We have put a considerable effort to make our enhancements fully
compatible with nonpatched LaTeX and I think we have succeeded---the
official interfaces are not quite bad :-) and all the required hacks are
under our control. So I am pretty sure the problem is on Thanh's
side---maybe he uses some prehistoric version from times when I was not
the maintainer of CSLaTeX and things were not so good :-)))

-jns

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| Jaroslav Snajdr                             http://home.zcu.cz/~snajdr5 |
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