From owner-freebsd-hackers  Tue Mar 21  8:26: 0 2000
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Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2000 10:18:38 -0600
To: MikeM <mike_bsdlists@yahoo.com>, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
From: "G. Adam Stanislav" <adam@whizkidtech.net>
Subject: Re: Unicode on FreeBSD
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At 11:47 20-03-2000 -0800, MikeM wrote:
>Has anyone thought of Unicode support on FreeBSD?

Certainly.

>Is it possible, or is it totally out of the question?
>
>What would it require?
>
>Is there any way of implementing partial support,
>working in stages, untill it is fully supported?

I worked on Unicode support last year, but had to discontinue my work due
to serious health problems (almost died). I am better now, but am not
likely to resume this particular work in the near future.

Anyway, I did partial support, with a UTF-8 package that is in the ports (I
think it is called utrans). It allows you to convert between various
Unicode encodings.

As for console support, I do not see how full Unicode set of characters
could be displayed on the standard console due to its hardware design which
allows for a theoretical maximum of 256 characters, with a practical
maximum even less.

X Window certainly does not have that limitation, but that is not directly
a matter of FreeBSD.

Adam


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