Hi,

How about the current status of Markus' SCW (Set Character Width)
proposal?  I think it is the time to start discussion.  (Since the
proposal says it is discussed on linux-utf8, I use the mailing list.
However, since the discussion is strongly connected to xterm and luit,
I Cc: to i18n@xfree86.)

Markus' SCW proposal:
   http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/scw-proposal.html



Background:

XFree86 4.2 has released and I am now working on Xterm improvement
to invoke "luit" according to user's LC_CTYPE locale.  The basic
part of my work has done and patches are sent to i18n@xfree86
mailing list:

xterm patch:
   http://www.xfree86.org/pipermail/i18n/2002-February/002965.html
luit patch:
   http://www.xfree86.org/pipermail/i18n/2002-February/002977.html

though I have some minor ideas to improve the patches.  Of course
(improved versions of) these patches are intended to be sent to
patch@xfree86.

I started to use xterm+luit in ja_JP.eucJP locale for my daily
use for test purpose (previously I used rxvt).  I felt again that
JIS X 0208 characters have to be doublewidth in EUC-JP mode.  Juliusz
thinks this should be realized by submitting single shift codes from
luit to xterm (thus the decision of width is done by luit side), and
I think it is a reasonable idea.

mail from Juliusz:
   http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-utf8/2001-11/msg00093.html

Though I don't know Juliusz will like it, I am planning to use a
small subset of Markus' SCW proposal, i.e., only

   CSI 1 w

I think this only one sequence is enough for my porpose.  I hope
Juliusz will agree because this sequence does not introduce any
new "state".  Of course I agree any other control sequence but I
don't know any other control sequences.

Thus, there are a few options which we can do:

1. fully agree with Markus' SCW proposal and luit will use a subset of it.

2. agree with a subset of the proposal and luit will use it.

3. modification of the proposal and luit will use it.

4. a new proposal which is entirely different from Markus' and luit
   will use it.

5. luit will use some xterm-local private undocumented control sequence.

6. xterm will have locale-dependent character width handling and
   we don't need any control sequence.

Markus' page says "the proposal is at this stage EXPERIMENTAL and
should not yet be fielded in widely distributed implementations without
consulting the author first."  I would also like to ask this point.
When the proposal will be mature and usable?  What is needed to
reach such mature and usable state?  If it takes a long time, I
think we may implement private undocumented control sequence and
use it until release of XFree86 4.3 because we will need debug
period.

---
Tomohiro KUBOTA <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://www.debian.or.jp/~kubota/
"Introduction to I18N"  http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/intro-i18n/
--
Linux-UTF8:   i18n of Linux on all levels
Archive:      http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-utf8/

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