[OS X TeX] Which encoding should I use?

[Maarten Sneep]

On 18 Nov 2005, at 10:49, Friedrich Vosberg wrote:

> Since I use TeXShop (starting at MacOS 8.x IIRC) I use Preferences  
> > Document > Encoding > MacOSRoman and inputenc=applemac. Is this  
> today the best choice, or should I switch to another more UNIX-like  
> encoding?

That depends: with whom do you exchange documents on a regular basis?  
What do they use? applemac will work on various systems as far as  
compilation is concerned, but editing may be a nightmare on Linux of  
Windows. The only encoding that is really worthwhile to switch to  
(imho) is unicode (most likely UTF-8). Its support is either good  
enough (most western languages) or absolutely inadequate (most asian  
languages). For western languages iso latin 1 is a fair alternative.

> Especially I hope that my problems with path names and file names  
> containing umlauts and spaces could be eliminated when using a more  
> MacOS-X-like encoding.

The current teTeX/TeXLive supports file-names with spaces: \input 
{"file name with spaces or än ümlaut"} (The double quotes are  
required, and you may need to use the same encoding as the underlying  
operating system: UTF-8 in the case of Mac OS X, if I'm not  
mistaken). Try it, I have no idea whether it will work.

Maarten------------------------- Info --------------------------
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