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

[Vladimir Volovich]

"DK" == David Kastrup writes:

[...]
 >> You argue that it's not possible to "go back" to \delta once it
 >> reached TeX's stomach (which is quite true); I see no major
 >> difference between this "loss of connection to original input" and
 >> the same loss of connection to original input which occurs in
 >> e.g. \verb+^^I+: once TeX have read the input, and converted it to
 >> tokens, the connection to the original input is lost.

 DK> Well, and your point is?  The error context in TeX's error
 DK> messages is straight from the input buffer, _before_ conversion
 DK> to tokens.  And it is the veracity of those error messages that I
 DK> am talking about all the time.  Tokenization has absolutely
 DK> nothing to with it.  Neither has internal list presentation.

 DK> The problem is that TeX is using the same output routines for
 DK> rendering error message contexts "readable" as it does for
 DK> rendering material passed through or produced by TeX readable.

right, - so making "full 8-bit terminal output" will not only allow
TeX to output error context lines "as is", but also will have
potentially meaningless and/or dangerous behavior when it will be
applied to "passed through" material.

the only clean solution would be to allow full 8-bit output only for
the messages produced for unparsed material (error context lines, etc).

i don't know if it's simple enough to separate such kinds of terminal
writes in TeX.

Best,
v.