Undeclared glyphs

[oneill@cs.sfu.ca]

One thing I've found rather strange is that some of the glyphs present in
an encoding aren't easily accessible with a \text<blah> command.

For example, I just had to look up `onehalf' in 8r.vec, and then add
'\DeclareTextSymbol{\textonehalf}{8r}{189}' to the front of a document
rather than just have it there from using 8r.sty. I suspect this may be to
`save memory', but if this is the case, couldn't we have a package option
(for 8r.sty, or in general for fontenc.sty) that would optionally define
the commands for all the glyphs in the encoding that aren't
straightforwardly accessible?

    Melissa.

P.S. Will 8r.sty eventually become 8renc.def to match the other encodings?