Re: unicode (was Re: Minor error message change)

["John E. Davis" <davis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Pavel Roskin <proski@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>I haven't seen this site before.  Thank you for the link.  It looks like
>it's too late to change standards.  OK, let's stick with whatever we have.

The current development version of the slang library has three
variables controlling the use of UTF-8.  These variables were
motivated by the fact that I would like to be able to use my editor
(jed) to edit UTF-8 encoded files using a non-UTF8 terminal.  In this
case, unicode characters > 0xFF would display as, e.g., a question
mark (?, possibly highlighted).  For this to work, the SLsmg interface
would interpret strings as UTF-8 encoded, but the lower level SLtt
interface would display characters>0xFF as ?.  In this mode, the
interpreter would assume that the character strings are UTF-8 encoded.
Hence the 3 variables are:

    SLtt_UTF8_Mode
    SLsmg_UTF8_Mode
    SLinterp_UTF8_Mode

where a non-zero value implies that strings are assumed to be UTF-8
encoded in that interface.

I think that this approach would permit slrn and mutt handle UTF-8
character sets on all terminals in a transparant way.  The tricky part
involves setting these variables.  The "standard" involving the locale
is too simplistic in this context.  That is, it implies that if the
locale is UTF-8, then all three of the variables should be set to a
non-zero value, which does not permit what I want to do.

Do you have any idea how to set these variables from e.g., the
environment?  It would be nice if the terminal could be assumed to be
in UTF-8 mode only if the value of $TERM contains the suffix -utf8,
e.g., xterm-utf8.  Unfortunately from what I have read, this is not
going to happen.  I would rather not rely upon slang-specific
environment variables such as TERM_UTF8.

Is the problem that I am trying to grapple with clear?  Has this issue
already been dealt with and solved before?  Any ideas?

Thanks,
--John