Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2008 17:36:24 +0400 From: "Alexander Churanov" <alexanderchuranov@gmail.com> To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org, "Tz-Huan Huang" <tzhuan@csie.org>, olli@lurza.secnetix.de Subject: Re: Unicode-based FreeBSD Message-ID: <3cb459ed0808290636r5eb389c8y6d4aafae1b8001cf@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <200808281718.m7SHISGL067492@lurza.secnetix.de> References: <3cb459ed0808250952j572dfc35j2feb852a73de5ace@mail.gmail.com> <200808281718.m7SHISGL067492@lurza.secnetix.de>
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2008/8/28 Oliver Fromme <olli@lurza.secnetix.de> > Right now, a Chinese sysadmin cannot simply go to a FreeBSD > console, run mutt and read mails from his co-workers that > contain Chinese characters. This *does* work fine with > Linux. This is clearly an area where FreeBSD is lacking. Tz-Huan, Could you comment on this? Does Linux really display and render all Chinese glyphs corectly? Do they have video card compatibility issues? How about top-to-bottom rendering? Is it actually used or useful in China and Taiwan? This would mean that they use graphical mode (and I was already suspecting this) and have complex processing layer. Unicode is not only a large bunch of characters, there are also such things as precomposed-decomposed characters, bidirectional text, etc. As for my project, complex rendering layer is definitely out of scope for now. However, the purpose of this discussion is to gather opinions for possible future projects. I see three possible layers of unicode support in FreeBSD: 1) Syscons in pure text mode. This needs improved Unicode support. 2) Non-X console in graphical mode (like Linux). This is not present in FreeBSD. 3) X and related applciations. From my point of view, this does not require modification for now. Probably, all three solutions should be implemented in ideal. And (1) plain-text console would be used only if running (2) is not possible. However, implementing (2) is a very expensive task. And that's why I'd like to receive comments. Probably, it is worth to discuss and extimate costs for such a project. Alexander Churanov
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