Re: RE: utf-8 test diagram

[Cyrille Chepelov <cyrille chepelov org>]

Jason,

Le Wed, May 29, 2002, à 01:56:51PM -0400, Maiorana, Jason a écrit:


> someone said that rc1 dia might not support characters outside
> of the current locale, which seemed strange to me because locales
> are mostly about case/keyboard/date/currency/sorting etc, and
> they arent supposed to limit visibility of other languages outside
> their own (one of the primary reasons to use unicode is to
> be able to mix characters from all languages together)

I said that. To display glyphs on a screen, you need that the whole process
is able to process said glyphs (and much more: xfs, X11, etc.). Currently,
dia 0.90-RC# is able to process UTF-8 data; however, one of its modules
can't. That module is called gtk.

There is a foolish solution: hack around gtk to shove "out of current
locale" display capability. Lots of energy coding and supporting the mess.

There is a second foolish (IMO) solution: use a non-released gtk/GNOME,
which happens to already have this display capability. This also means lots
of energy answering to people complaining they can't build (and not having
read the NEWS and INSTALL files...). This also means cutting of the less
adventurous user (and developer...) base.

There is a third solution: calling the situation we have with 0.90 a clear
improvement over 0.88.1, and be patient until gtk2/GNOME2 is actually released. 
That should happen before the summer; thanks to the Win32 and experimental gtk2
porting experience, it seems the actual switch to gtk2 won't be difficult
(especially since now, all the inside of the code is already audited for
UTF-8).

When we have basic gtk2 porting done, and the removal of all character set
juggling done, we'll be able to use Pango and then have all the sexy
features (like mixing Latin0 and KOI8-R, or perhas even handle BiDi)

For the moment, we're in a state called "feature freeze in order to release
that damn long-awaited version"...

> I could peek around in the source, but im sure someone understands
> the issue. it may be as simply as the fonts its using not supporting
> those glyphs (but i would expect to see squares if that were the case)
> If there are any chinese/japanese locale users of dia rc1 windows
> version, does it work for them, im curious?

I'm not a Chinese/Japanese locale user of RC1 Windows; however, since Win32
is using almost gtk2, I wouldn't be surprised to see mixed latin0/Han text
being actually visible there.

        -- Cyrille

-- 
Grumpf.