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

[Goran Koruga <goran.koruga@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 27 Jun 2003 11:36:37 -0400, John E. Davis wrote:

Hello.

> 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?

Have you looked at this URL :

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/unicode.html

It suggests you use langinfo() to get info about it.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
    Goran
> 
> Thanks,
> --John

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