Message-Id: <9212032152.AA28334@sc.zib-berlin.dbp.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
In-Reply-To:  Robin Fairbairns's message of Thu,
              3 Dec 92 16:24:40 +0000 <9212031829.AA06506@central>
Date:         Thu, 3 Dec 92 14:46:08 MST
From: "Jonathan M. Gilligan" <gilligan@CENTRAL.BLDRDOC.GOV>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
To: Multiple Recipients of <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
Subject:      Who needs a \charset primitive (was: structured comments)
Status: R


Robin Fairbairns writes:
   David said:
   |>> It *may* be reasonable to switch character sets from within (a
   |> successor to) TeX, rather than from the command line, or having
   |> different sets built into different executables, but such extra
   |> functionality should *not* be a comment, rather it should be a new
   |> primitive
   |> \characterset=

   This particular part of the discussion has already happened once, on
   NTS-L.  David (quite rightly ;-) agrees with what I said in that
   context, yea, these many moons ago.

Perhaps it's because I missed the discussion on NTS-L, but I don't see
why \charset\ would have to be a primitive. Couldn't it be a macro
that resets \catcode, \uccode, and \lccode\ values and selects a set
of fonts for which a vf provides the appropriate remapping of the
glyph set?

If I were doing it, I'd \def\charset#1{\input #1.charset}, where the
file foo.charset contains the commands to reset \uccode s, etc., and
redefines the \font s (e.g., \font\cmrx=foocmr10, where foocmr10.tfm
and foocmr10.vf have been generated by vptovf from a vf that reencodes
cmr10.pl). A program to automatically generate a vpl file, given the
pl for the actual font and the character set to be used with the tfm
file should be quite easy to write.

Given that everything should be possible using existing faculties of
TeX, what would be gained by programming in a \charset\ primitive?  Am
I missing something?

---Jon
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jonathan M. Gilligan            Time and Frequency Division
<gilligan@central.bldrdoc.gov>  National Institute of Standards and Technology
				Boulder, Colorado, USA

Disclaimer --- The government probably disagrees with my opinions.