Re: [tlug] UTF-8 for single-byte character sets

[Tim Hurman <kano-tlug@example.com>]

On Thu, 16 Jan 2003, Jonathan Byrne wrote:

> The exact statement/sentiment/idea that was generally agreed to was more
> exactly "I won't downgrade my MUA just because yours can't read the
> *RFC-compliant" stuff I'm sending."
> If I was sending stuff that your MUA couldn't read b/c mine was creating
> non-RFC-compliant crap, I would want the author of my MUA to fix it.  If,
> after a reasonable amount of time it was not fixed, I would have to look
> into changings MUAs.
>
> As far as where I stand on the Unicode issue, I tend mostly to agree that
> there isn't much point in using it for a single language, especially when
> so many people will have problems reading it.  Unicode is becoming popular
> for writing in Vietnamese, though, and it's not a bad idea there.  There
> are several standards for writing in Vietnamese (VISCII, TVCN, VIQR, am I
> missing any?), and the mess can be clarified by everyone moving toward
> UTF-8.
>

If you are writing a document in the ASCII set, it doesnt matter if you
are using ASCII or UTF-8 of course, because they are both pretty much the
same in the 0x00 -> 0x7F range. The main thing lacking is a decent input
method editor as far as I can see. This is where I believe that CDE has
actually got it sorted. You can select a virtual keyboard layout at the
bottom of each window. Is there such a thing for linux, something like
kinput2, that can access multiple dictionaries and returns in UTF8 or the
ability to change the keyboard layout for each individual window?

Tim.


-- 
"ergo it is easier to drag sheep downhill" - Applied Ergonomics Magasine
Tim Hurman - Email: kano at kano.org.uk - Phone: Yeah right.