Re: What support is there for Unicode?

In message <4582f0e34e.martin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Martin Wuerthner <spamtrap@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In message <d3add9e34e.chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Chris Hughes <chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In message <8c5ecee34e.martin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Martin Wuerthner <spamtrap@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In message <c87f4de34e.chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Chris Hughes <chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

OK, so the Unicode characters that happen to be present in the 8-bit
font you have chosen for display happen to be displayed correctly, but
that still means that on RO4/RO6 the text is displayed using an 8-bit
character set and you are limited to <256 glyphs at a time. Rather
different from what Netsurf does on RO5 where it can display text in
many languages using a single font.

To be honest I don't care about the technical reasons! It just works
here normally.

Does it? When have you last looked at a web page with text in
different foreign alphabets (Hebrew, Russian, etc.)? That is the whole
point of Unicode. And it is also the whole point of Michael's request.

Indeed Druck has made one of those inaccurate statement that he is so
passionate about correcting! ;-)

As far as I can see Druck is correct.

Sorry, but he was not strictly correct he said it was only available
on RO5, but users of certainly applications can use see Unicode
(converted as you put it) on RO4 and 6.

Of course. You can do that easily on a BBC B, too, but that is not
what Unicode is about. And "converted" is not a technical detail here,
it means "throw away most characters and display nothing for them".
So, if displaying nothing for a Unicode character is enough for you to
call it "supported", then by that definition, I fully agree with you.
:-)

To avoid any misunderstanding: I do admire the effort the NetSurf
developers have put into Unicode handling and NetSurf does far better
than any other program in this respect, in particular on RISC OS
versions without any Unicode support. But there is only so much you
can do on a system that is limited to 8-bit character sets.

I have never disputed that. My point was he said there was *NO*
Unicode support when there is some, maybe not perfect but some.


!Unicode is a collection of small data files. Having a resource called
!Unicode on your machine does not magically add any Unicode support to
the OS. RO4/RO6 have no Unicode support whatsoever.

The OS might not, but some applications do support it via !Unicode
(converting to in the 8 bit character set) so therefore it is
available on RO4 and 6 via those applications.

Well, if Unicode support in RISC OS is so great, why would Michael
have stated "I am beginning to find lack of Unicode a pain"?

I will repeat this to make it clearer.

RO5 good/better support for Unicode

RO4 and 6 - limited support for Unicode.

Yes it would be nice in the OS as standard (all current versions),
maybe it will be eventually.

--
Chris Hughes
Don't miss the Wakefield Show - 19th May
http://www.wakefieldshow.org.uk
.

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