[OS X TeX] An article about LaTeX and word processors

[Herbert Schulz]

> On Feb 3, 2017, at 8:33 AM, Alain Schremmer <schremmer.alain at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Is that for real?
> 
> 
> On , at 2017 Feb 3,7:46 AM, William Adams wrote:
> 
>> https://xkcd.com/1301/
> 

Howdy,

ASCII has been stable for quite a long time and .tex files used to always be pure ASCII. Life is a bit more complicated now. With many 8bit encodings around it is necessary to have something in the file that is a clue as to what encoding was used (in LaTeX it's usually a \usepackage[xxxx]{inputenc} line and/or some directive for the editor/front end you are using). With multi-bite encodings, like Unicode (most often UTF-8) it is absolutely necessary to either use an engine that understands UTF-8 ((xe/lua)(la)tex) directly or use the proper inputenc line and editor directive. A bit more complicated but still very stable.

PS: there are lots of file types that are pure ASCII so that cartoon is a bit out of date.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)