Re: Unicode console patch

edmund@rano.demon.co.uk
Wed, 3 Feb 1999 16:00:24 GMT

> Linux console is almost UTF-8. "Almost" because there is no easy way for
> querying whether it is in UTF-8 mode or not, or whether the terminal
> supports UTF-8 at all and how to switch it on when it does. I don't see
> a good way for an interface for this, however: escape sequences are
> practically unusable because they require to flush stdin; ioctls don't
> get through telnet / xterm / screen. But this is the only missing element.
>
> I vote against complicating the whole thing by adding full ISO-2022
> support. UTF-8 is almost done, is *much* simpler and AFAIK gives nothing
> less than ISO-2022.

Well, I'm in favour of UTF-8, too.

You could probably do quite a lot without querying whether the terminal
is in UTF-8 mode or whether UTF-8 is supported; a UTF-8 editor could
just send "\033%G" to the terminal if the user asks for UTF-8 (and
blame the user if it doesn't work).

It might be useful for the program to be able to ask whether a
particular character can be displayed or not. (An editor might then
show the octal code instead.)

If we want to do Korean it might be useful to be able to ask how big a
particular character is when displayed. (Korean consoles tend to use
double-width characters.)

By the way, is there a standard relevant to terminals with proportional
spacing?

And does anyone think that Linux's console should be able to cope with
right-to-left scripts?

And does anyone know of an editor, even a very simple one, that can run
in a Linux console in UTF-8 mode?

Edmund

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