Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Sat, 30 Nov 1996 18:57:18 +0100 | From | Michael Bruck <> | Subject | Re: Unicode status |
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At 11:15 30.11.1996 -0600, Aaron Ucko wrote: > > >[linux-console and linux-ggi added to Cc: list] > >Michael Bruck <micha@tecnet.de> writes: > >> But as far as I remember Unicode is only present in keyboard handling code. >> It's impossible (or at last not easy) to receive Unicode input in >> applications. > >No, it's very easy; if your standard input is a VC, just >#include <sys/kd.h> >and call >ioctl(0, KDSKBMODE, K_UNICODE); >your program will then receive input in the form of UTF-8 encoded >Unicode characters. This doesn't win you anything with the default >keymap, though, and yields incorrect input when your keymap is for a >character set other than ISO 8859-1.
Yes of course you can say the kernel not to care about input and pipe characters (nearly) unprocessed into the application. But I thought of a stable/robust solution. As far as I know switching to K_UNICODE is risky. Nobody handles ^C, ^Z ... and if ^C would be processed the user would end up with K_UNICODE in his shell. And not everybody has a network connection to escape from this. (Yes I know there is/are a/some trick(s) to get out of this.)
> >> What I was thinking of was an extension to the output handling. Especially >> it should be possible to write a graphics mode console (like the TGA driver) >> that is capable of displaying all characters. There are three + n problems >> to be >> solved to implement this: > >Although this can certainly be done, it is by no means clear that it >should be; true text modes are, and will always be, faster than >comparable graphics modes. Linux already allows 512-character fonts; >while 512 is certainly less than 65536, it is plenty for many people. >Nevertheless, it shouldn't be too hard to get GGI to support it if >people are interested and don't mind the relatively slow performance. > >As for fonts, somebody has produced a free font with a lot of Unicode >characters; I don't remember where it is, though. >
What is GGI?
Of course graphics are faster, and I would still have a 386-25 with Standard-VGA I wouldn't even think about wasting performance with this. But in 1996 this of less concern. And who wants to run Linux as DNS-Server on a 386-25 can use the standard textmode console.
What I mean is Unicode *support*. Not "With Linux your *could* write an application that supports Unicode." But "I can use Linux in a Chinese school to teach Russian and allow them to exchange mail with a school there." (An BTW Chinese Linux could be used by > 1GPeople (where 1GPeople is 1024*1024*1024*People)).
About Win95, WinNT I can say: "I just plug in my Latin/Russian/Arabic keyboard and start typing." Of course there are not all programms Unicode-aware, but there are enough that are. (f.e. Winword)"
At 14:19 30.11.1996 +0000, Alan Cox wrote: > >Its not hard, and the UTF-8 encoding used needs no extra magic to handle it. >You can even use it in file names. >
But 90% of all programs for Linux are displaying either a ? or \xxx instad. They often don't even show characters that are in Latin1 encoding.
Michael
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