[texhax] chktex, are it's reports any good?

[Philip Taylor]

David Carlisle wrote:

> " is never correct as an input character. 

I think that the validity of that observation hinges on the interpretation of "an input character". 

'"' is not only correct, but actually required, in constructions such as '\char "62' if the '62' is to be interpreted to base-16, and of course in 8-bit systems notations such as 'Schr\"oder' are also needed in order to achieve a diaresis/umlaut.  Knuth's own guidance is probably the best here :

'There are four remaining special characters in the standard ASCII set:  "  |  <  > ... you don't really want them when you are typesetting text'.

Philip Taylor