Subj : Re: Need volonteers to test another patch
To   : Michiel van der Vlist
From : Vitaliy Aksyonov
Date : Wed Mar 06 2024 10:32 am

Hello Michiel.

06 Mar 24 13:38, you wrote to me:

 VA>> Best possible way is to use UTF-8 for all strings inside and only
 VA>> convert text when read/write from/to message base and to screen.

 MvdV> I agree. That will be the easiest way to make as many Fidonet
 MvdV> participants use UTF-8 all the way. With the sceen set to CP65001
 MvdV> writing to and from the screen should need no conversion.

 VA>> And even if drop DOS support - need to take into account OS
 VA>> specifics for Unicode.

 MvdV> Such as? Even OS/2 has full UTF-8 support doesn't it?

Windows and Linux works with console very differently. Even support those two together is a challenge. Code is not very well encapsulated in GoldEd and OS specifics just everywhere.

I haven't tried OS/2 at all, so have no idea, how UTF-8 works there. Does it use ncurses too?

 VA>>  As long as GoldEd uses fixed size buffers in many places -
 VA>> that's huge refactoring. Better to replace it with std::string
 VA>> almost everywhere.

 MvdV> Perhaps, but that won't solve the problem that when writing back to
 MvdV> the message base strings have to be of fixed lenght for the To:,
 MvdV> From:, Subj: and other fields. It may be necessary to truncate in
 MvdV> order to fit. Truncating should be done on a UTF-8 sequence boundery.
 MvdV> If need be step back until a byte with bit 7 and 6 set.

 VA>>>> For example function, which splits message to lines is almost
 VA>>>> 1000 lines long! It has variables, used in multiple places, it
 VA>>>> not only splits the message, but guess charset, do recoding and
 VA>>>> other fun stuff.

 MvdV>>> Wauw!

 VA>> That's one of the reasons, why progress is slow.

 MvdV> Keep up the good work!

Thanks. I try to fix or enhance something which doesn't break existing functionality. Hope some day we'll have UTF-8 support too.

Vitaliy

.... 640K ought to be enough for anybody
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20240305-beta
 * Origin: Aurora, Colorado (1:104/117)

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