Hi, Juliusz,
Thanks for your e-mail, and sorry I haven't replied sooner. I am passing your
comments and questions along to my engineering team, as, sadly, I am a manager
and this incapable of understanding anything more complex than a paperclip :-).
I will press them to be as polite and responsive as you have been.
Thanks, again,
-steve
>X-Unix-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wed Sep 12 17:27:21 2001
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>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: Re: [I18n]xterm-158, XIM and UTF-8
>From: Juliusz Chroboczek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Date: 13 Sep 2001 01:26:46 +0100
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>List-Id: XFree86 Internationalization <i18n.XFree86.Org>
>
>Hello Steve,
>
>Thanks for your comments.
>
>SS> XIM is working very well with the CSI (code-set independent)
>SS> version of xterm provided by Li18nux.org (patches from IBM).
>
>Just to clarify matters: as far as I am aware, XIM works fine in
>XFree86 XTerm 158 on a properly configured system, thanks to
>Tomohiro's work.
>
>The only issue is that our XTerm currently crashes instead of
>gracefully aborting if the system's configuration is broken; we are
>committed to fixing this very minor bug.
>
>SS> It works equally well in our UTF-8 locales and our non-UTF-8
>SS> locales.
>
>It goes without saying that I gratefully acknowledge Sun's pioneering
>work in the area of international support on X11 systems. While some
>of the engineering choices that Sun's engineers have made are diffe-
>rent from the ones we did, all that matters in the end is proper in-
>ternational support at the user level.
>
>I am extremely curious to know how you intend to implement combining
>characters in your framework.
>
>SS> Because of this (CSI), Sun will be adopting this version
>SS> of xterm, rather than the utf-8 hardwired one, for a future
>SS> release of Solaris.
>
>As with most engineering decisions, there can be multiple choices that
>are correct. Historically, Sun have used the CSI approach, and I have
>no doubt that your engineers are well versed in its arcana.
>
>XFree86 is committed to a model in which applications use Unicode
>internally and convert at the application's boundary. Sun would
>appear to be committed to a different model. Assuming that you intend
>to keep your code under a sufficiently liberal license for us to use,
>this can only make me glad, as crossbreeding between different
>implementations can only be a good thing.
>
>SS> I also encourage the Xfree86 community to strongly consider the
>SS> value of a code-set independent version of xterm, since there are
>SS> many Linux platforms with non-utf8 international locales which
>SS> will benefit from an implementation which works cleanly with both
>SS> the encoding and the input methods of those locales.
>
>As far as I know, there is no user-visible difference between the two
>models. User-level code set independence is provided in XFree86 XTerm
>by Tomohiro's iconv patches or, alternatively, by the ``luit'' layer.
>If you disagree with that assessment, please do discuss any short-
>comings of our approach that you may have noticed -- as I mentioned
>above, your technical expertise is highly valued.
>
>While I have your ear: the version of dtterm that Sun distributes
>since Solaris 2.6 does selection conversion correctly. Last time I
>checked, this was not the case of the IBM patches. I would like to
>encourage you to check interoperability of your version of XTerm with
>dtterm as well as our version of XTerm in wide character mode; this is
>especially important with Europe switching to the Euro by the end of
>the year.
>
>Support for the UTF8_STRING mechanism would be a welcome addition, now
>that Ienup Sung has blessed the protocol.
>
>SS> P.S. I agree with Owen's sentiments about XIM, and Sun strongly
>SS> encourages the use of IIIM as an alternative.
>
>Thanks to both of you for the information. I will try to understand
>IIIM and get back to you.
>
>See you, and take care in those difficult times,
>
> Juliusz
>
>P.S. As usual, I am speaking for myself and not for XFree86.
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Steve Swales
Senior Manager, Platform Globalization Engineering
X.Org Chairperson and Sun Representative
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
901 San Antonio Road, MS USJC07-201
Palo Alto, CA 94303-4900
408 635-0623 Direct
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