Let's consider utf8 or latin1 encoding - german. When you look at the wording, you may notice that this question makes no sense for UTF-8 compilers with their default settings (these compilers would correctly produce an error while processing \usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
), so there is an implicit assumption that latex
, pslatex
or pdflatex
are used, as opposed to lualatex
or xelatex
. However, the answer (with which you may agree or not) "use lualatex" has been accepted.
So, the OPer is ready to sacrifice the underlying assumption, and, thus, the question itself in its current formulation. Based on the accepted answer, my best guess is that the intended question was "Would you use latin1 or utf8 for creating German LaTeX documents?" (Btw., I feel that "use UTF-8 and compile with xelatex
or lualatex
" are pretty good general answers to the intended question, but this is off-topic here.) However, originally I read the
OP as "Would you use latin1 or utf8 for creating German LaTeX documents if you use the package inputenc
?" The implicit assumption "if you use the package inputenc
" is IMHO equivalent to using latex
, pslatex
or pdflatex
. For my own documents, the two questions (the intended one and the way I read it) would be vastly different; the OP misled me (which is reflected in my answer). Moreover, the question might be considered outdated, as @AndrewSwann says (the OP is old and the defaults have changed), cf. What shall we do with future out-of-date answers?.
I feel the community should EDIT the OP utf8 or latin1 encoding - german (making it clearer and more narrow in one or the other way or marking it as out of date), or DELETE it, or CLOSE it rather than leave it there in its misleading form. Of course, I left a comment to the OP.
Now, I don't feel senior enough to execute such a change or even ask the admin to do it without prior asking here, so, opinions are welcome: what to do with the OP utf8 or latin1 encoding - german? More generally, what to do with a broad, potentially misleading questions with several interpretations such that only the acceptance of an answer shows that the intended interpretation is notably different from the wording used?