On 03/08/14 07:58, Paul Moore wrote:
[...]
Thanks for the explanation, but with all due respect, it doesn't seem
unreasonable to me for a user to expect that if they specify a
commonly-used monospace font like Consolas, Lucida Console, or even
Courier New, they should get behaviour that is similar to that of
every other text editor around, which is that characters outside of
the normal range of the font are displayed in a way (presumably using
an alternative substitute font) that makes their form discernable -
not a "no such character" box, but a usable representation. Having sto
set a series of options that require a deep understanding of character
sets and how fonts work should not be needed just to see the contents
of a file to the level of clarity that Notepad can manage.
I understand that Vim does things very differently from other programs
at an internal level to allow (for example) support for R-L character
set handling. And I appreciate that the code in Vim is old, dating
back to Windows 95 and earlier, and as such includes workarounds for
limitations of some very old systems.
Much earlier. There are (or used to be) versions of Vim for MS-DOS and
for 16-bit Windows: that should tell you. And the other editors (such as
Notepad) of that time didn't try to second-guess fonts: you selected
one, and they used that; and any character for which your font had no
glyph appeared as some "placeholder glyph", usually a hollow box.
But honestly, none of this matters. The simple fact is that Vim should
be able to do (at least) as well as everything else. I don't have an
issue with the fact that there's a problem right now, but I do expect
at least an acknowledgement that this is a bug and that fixes when
offered will be considered.
[...]
Well, it can. Just switch to Linux and compile Vim with GTK2. :-P
But offered patches will be considered. If Bram finds their code to be
of the high quality expected of Vim, he may even decide to incorporate
them into some future version of Vim: we'll see what happens to your
patch in the future. I have no say in the matter, and I don't know Vim
code well enough to propose patches; but in the years I've been using
Vim, I've found it to be extremely well-documented, quite possibly the
best-documented of all personal-computer software. I might regret some
of its limitations, but as long as they're documented, I go with them.
The fact that, with the exception of GTK2, all versions of gvim accept
only fonts defined as monospace and use only the font you defined, is
stated in the documentation (the online help). If you know how to lift
that limitation, so much the better: go ahead.
Best regards,
Tony.
--
Immanuel doesn't pun, he Kant.
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