Re: Enscript and unicode, was Re: is a2ps broken?

[David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk>]

Quoting rlharris@oplink.net (rlharris@oplink.net):
> On Fri, September 25, 2015 11:34 pm, David Wright wrote:
> > The OP thanked me for my first post which suggested what might cause
> > problems in a2ps, but AFAICT gave no feedback on whether it was any help.
> > Presumably not, hence his move to enscript.
> ...
> > He appears not to be interested in unicode ("Fooey on unicode, then.")
> 
> Hi, David.
> 
> Your comments were helpful; they told me what I needed to know -- that
> a2ps is broken with respect to unicode.  I did not see what to do to a2ps,
> much less, how to do it.  So, having a pressing need, I abandoned a2ps and
> with relatively little effort I managed to get enscript configured to my
> liking.
> 
> I suppose that, running Jessie, I am using unicode, but that aspect of
> Linux is something I never have studied, and at present I do not have time
> to study.  I simply must use whatever representation the Debian team has
> decided to employ; but I do regret losing a2ps, which, for a number of
> years, worked well "right out of the box".
> 
> However, whatever the representation used in Jessie, enscript is working
> for me.

Fortunately linux chose utf8 to represent unicode (unlike 'doze) so
you get compatible behaviour if you're not too adventurous with your
characters. In my case, once TeX went to unicode, I could throw out
obscure incantations and sizeable lookup tables from my style files
and just put the characters I wanted to print into the source files.
My other major application, LilyPond, originating much later and
outside the US, was designed with Latin-1, then replaced by unicode
in 2005. It's a major advantage being able to write curly quotes etc
as they are to appear. In fact, I can't imagine going back to the old
methods.

I'm lucky in that I no longer need to prettyprint stuff like source
code and emails any more. I hope enscript lasts you a while; changing
over is a wrench (as I remember, when a2ps's options changed a good
deal between bo and hamm).

Cheers,
David.