Re: [slang-users] system wchar functions support?

[Miroslav Lichvar <mlichvar@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 12:31:18AM -0400, John E. Davis wrote:
> Miroslav Lichvar <mlichvar@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > I was wondering if there is any interest in using libc functions for
> > handling wide characters? The main benefit would be support of other
> > multibyte encodings than UTF-8. It could be controlled by a configure
> > option.
> 
> The problem with adding such support to the 2.x series is that it
> would break binary compatibility.

In the common case where sizeof(wchar_t) == sizeof(int) == 4 and
SLUTF8_MAX_MBLEN == MB_CUR_MAX for UTF-8 it would be compatible, or
not?

To prevent unexpected problems, the application would need to do
something like SLutf8_enable(2) to enable the new behavior for
non-UTF-8 locale.

> So such a feature would have to
> wait until version 3, which I have not thought about yet.   As
> such, version 3 is at least a year or two down the road.  Perhaps by
> then UTF-8 will be widespread enough that supporting other multibyte
> encodings will be unnecessary. 
> 
> From my point of view, I see more and more people migrating towards
> UTF-8.  Do you have a different sense of where UTF-8 will be in a few
> years?

No. I was just curious to hear if there are others who would welcome
the support. If it was implemented, I could remove an ugly hack in
newt (a library for user interfaces) that tries to workaround the
problem by constantly redrawing screen.

Thanks,

-- 
Miroslav Lichvar