[XeTeX] Encoding of auxiliary files

[Jonathan Kew]

On 12 Mar 2008, at 5:12 pm, Ulrike Fischer wrote:

> Am Wed, 12 Mar 2008 12:41:00 +0000 schrieb Jonathan Kew:
>
>>> Btw: Is is correct that the following code
>
>>> {\XeTeXdefaultencoding "cp1252"
>>>  \XeTeXdefaultencoding "auto"}
>
>>> gives the message
>>> ### simple group (level 1) entered at line 5 ({)
>>> ### bottom level
>
>> It is correct, though admittedly a little surprising. The issue here
>> is that encoding names (which are treated like filenames as far as
>> TeX's scanner is concerned) need to be terminated somehow. The quotes
>> do not necessarily delimit them, because it's possible for a name to
>> be constructed from several quoted fragments,
>
> That's the problem when you do to much LaTeX, you forget that  
> arguments
> are delimited differently somehow when you use primitives. ;-)
>
> But if the quotes don't terminate the filename, then why using them at
> all? \XeTeXdefaultencoding cp1252\relax and  \XeTeXdefaultencoding
> auto\relax seems to work fine.

Right; they'd only really be necessary if you have a space in the  
encoding name. (Which probably doesn't apply to codepage names, but  
it applies to files and especially font names, of course. And they're  
all scanned in the same way by xetex. So I'm in the habit of putting  
quotes around any and all "filenames" in my source.)

JK