[tex-live] fwd: \delta in overfull \hboxes screws up xterm

[Hans Hagen]

Olaf Weber wrote:

>Hans Hagen writes:
>  
>
>>Olaf Weber wrote:
>>    
>>
>
>  
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>>>(And I believe I'm entitled to a small "I told you so" as I did try to
>>>point this out during previous rounds of this discussion.)
>>>      
>>>
>
>  
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>>-) i'm aware of the internal mapping that tex does, but i just
>>wondered where this anomality originates esp since i know of no other
>>system that uses ^^ for escaping; maybe that was normal 25 years ago
>>    
>>
>
>Now I'm not sure what anomaly you're talking about.  The use of ^^ is
>idiosyncratic, but any consistent quoting strategy would have done.
>  
>
The problem with such 'escapes' i sthat it may the confuse users (like me)

is it 

  \expandafer^^G\whatever 

or 

  \expandafter^\expandafter^\expandafter G

(and something similar for #1 ##1 ... ##########1 etc, i.e. the macro parameter character is even more tricky sometimes)

tex differs from other systems (that use escapes) in the fact that it expands (although ... in javascript one ends up with messy escaped chars in regexps, so it may belong to thsi world)   

Anyhow, we have to live with it and somehow deal with the terminal output (i'd love to be able to spit out ansi escape sequences to color messages, so if we can have 8 bit terminal output ... -) 

Hans  


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