  The energy dependence of chirally expanded pi N isoscalar and isovector
amplitudes b_0(E) and b_1(E) respectively, for zero-momentum off shell pions
near threshold, is used to impose the minimal substitution requirement E -> E -
V_c on the properly constructed pion optical potential within a large-scale fit
to 100 pionic-atom data across the periodic table which also include the
recently established `deeply bound' pionic atoms of Pb and Sn. This fit cannot
be reconciled with the well known free-space values of the pi N threshold
amplitudes. In contrast, introducing the empirically known energy dependence
for on-shell pions leads to a better fit and to satisfactory values for the pi
N threshold amplitudes. The difference between these two approaches is briefly
discussed.
