changeset 92007:ac427ac35e97

Split into admin/notes/unicode,font-backend
author Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org>
date Thu, 21 Feb 2008 04:01:14 +0000
parents 850ec4b2f0bc
children 82d7d86edc95
files README.unicode
diffstat 1 files changed, 0 insertions(+), 216 deletions(-) [+]
line wrap: on
line diff
--- a/README.unicode	Thu Feb 21 04:00:22 2008 +0000
+++ /dev/null	Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000
@@ -1,216 +0,0 @@
-                                            -*-mode: text; coding: latin-1;-*-
-
-Copyright (C) 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008
-  Free Software Foundation, Inc.
-See the end of the file for license conditions.
-
-Problems, fixmes and other unicode-related issues
--------------------------------------------------------------
-
-Notes by fx to record various things of variable importance.  handa
-needs to check them -- don't take too seriously, especially with
-regard to completeness.
-
- * SINGLE_BYTE_CHAR_P returns true for Latin-1 characters, which has
-   undesirable effects.  E.g.:
-   (multibyte-string-p (let ((s "x")) (aset s 0 ?£) s)) => nil
-   (multibyte-string-p (concat [?£])) => nil
-   (text-char-description ?£) => "M-#"
-
-	These examples are all fixed by the change of 2002-10-14, but
-	there still exist questionable SINGLE_BYTE_CHAR_P in the
-	code (keymap.c and print.c).
-
- * Rationalize character syntax and its relationship to the Unicode
-   database.  (Applies mainly to symbol an punctuation syntax.)
-
- * Fontset handling and customization needs work.  We want to relate
-   fonts to scripts, probably based on the Unicode blocks.  The
-   presence of small-repertoire 10646-encoded fonts in XFree 4 is a
-   pain, not currently worked round.
-
-	With the change on 2002-07-26, multiple fonts can be
-	specified in a fontset for a specific range of characters.
-	Each range can also be specified by script.  Before using
-	ISO10646 fonts, Emacs checks their repertories to avoid such
-	fonts that don't have a glyph for a specific character.
-
-	fx has worked on fontset customization, but was stymied by
-	basic problems with the way the default face is dealt with
-	(and something else, I think).  This needs revisiting.
-
- * Work is also needed on charset and coding system priorities.
-
- * The relevant bits of latin1-disp.el need porting (and probably
-   re-naming/updating).  See also cyril-util.el.
-
- * Quail files need more work now the encoding is largely irrelevant.
-
- * What to do with the old coding categories stuff?
-
- * The preferred-coding-system property of charsets should probably be
-   junked unless it can be made more useful now.
-
- * find-multibyte-characters needs looking at.
-
- * Implement Korean cp949/UHC, BIG5-HKSCS and any other important missing
-   charsets.
-
- * Lazy-load tables for unify-charset somehow?
-
-	Actually, Emacs clears out all charset maps and unify-map just
-	before dumping, and they are loaded again on demand by the
-	dumped emacs.  But, those maps (char tables) generated while
-	temacs is running can't be removed from the dumped emacs.
-
- * Translation tables for {en,de}code currently aren't supported.
-
-	This should be fixed by the changes of 2002-10-14.
-
- * Defining CCL coding systems currently doesn't work.
-
-	This should be fixed by the changes of 2003-01-30.
-
- * iso-2022 charsets get unified on i/o.
-
-	With the change on 2003-01-06, decoding routines put `charset'
-	property to decoded text, and iso-2022 encoder pay attention
-	to it.  Thus, for instance, reading and writing by
-	iso-2022-7bit preserve the original designation sequences.
-	The property name `preferred-charset' may be better?
-
-	We may have to utilize this property to decide a font.
-
- * Revisit locale processing: look at treating the language and
-   charset parts separately.  (Language should affect things like
-   spelling and calendar, but that's not a Unicode issue.)
-
- * Handle Unicode combining characters usefully, e.g. diacritics, and
-   handle more scripts specifically (à la Devanagari).  There are
-   issues with canonicalization.
-
- * Bidi is a separate issue with no support currently.
-
- * We need tabular input methods, e.g. for maths symbols.  (Not
-   specific to Unicode.)
-
- * Need multibyte text in menus, e.g. for the above.  (Not specific to
-   Unicode -- see Emacs etc/TODO, but now mostly works with gtk.)
-
- * There's currently no support for Unicode normalization.
-
- * Populate char-width-table correctly for Unicode characters and
-   worry about what happens when double-width charsets covering
-   non-CJK characters are unified.
-
- * Emacs 20/21 .elc files are currently not loadable.  It may or may
-   not be possible to do this properly.
-
-	With the change on 2002-07-24, elc files generated by Emacs
-	20.3 and later are correctly loaded (including those
-	containing multibyte characters and compressed).  But, elc
-	files generated by 20.2 and the primer are still not loadable.
-	Is it really worth working on it?
-
- * Rmail won't work with non-ASCII text.  Encoding issues for Babyl
-   files need sorting out, but rms says Babyl will go before this is
-   released.
-
- * Gnus still needs some attention, and we need to get changes
-   accepted by Gnus maintainers...
-
- * There are type errors lurking, e.g. in
-   Fcheck_coding_systems_region.  Define ENABLE_CHECKING to find them.
-
- * You can grep the code for lots of fixmes.
-
- * Old auto-save files, and similar files, such as Gnus drafts,
-   containing non-ASCII characters probably won't be re-read correctly.
-
-
-
-New font handling mechanism with font backend method
-----------------------------------------------------
-
-Emacs now contains new codes for handling fonts by multiple font
-backends.  The old font handling codes still exist completely parallel
-to the new codes, and the new codes are used only when you configure
-Emacs with the argument "--enable-font-backend".
-
-Which font backends to use can be specified by X resource
-"FontBackend".  For instance, if you want to use Xft fonts only,
-
-Emacs.FontBackend: xft
-
-will work.  If this resource is not set, Emacs tries to use all font
-backends available on your graphic device.
-
-The configure script, if invoked with "--enable-font-backend", checks
-if libraries freetype and fontconfig exist.  If they are both
-available, macro "USE_FONT_BACKEND" is defined in src/config.h.  In
-that case, the existing of Xft library is checked too.
-
-The new files are:
-	font.h -- header providing font-backend related structures
-		(most important ones are "struct font" and "struct
-		font_driver"), macros, and etc.
-	font.c -- main font handling code.
-	xfont.c -- font-driver on X for X core fonts.
-	ftfont.c -- generic font-driver for FreeType fonts providing
-		device-independent methods of struct font_driver.
-	xftfont.c -- font-driver on X using Xft for FreeType fonts
-		utilizing methods provided by ftfont.c.
-	ftxfont.c -- font-driver on X directly using FreeType fonts
-		utilizing methods provided by ftfont.c.
-	w32font.c -- font driver on w32 using Windows native fonts,
-		corresponding to xfont.c
-
-So we already have codes for X.  For the other systems (w32 and mac),
-it seems that we need these files:
-	atmfont.c -- font-driver on mac using ATM fonts, corresponding
-		to xfont.c
-As BDF fonts are currently used on w32, we may also implement these:
-	bdffont.c -- generic font-driver for BDF fonts, corresponding to
-		ftfont.c
-	bdfw32font.c -- font-driver on w32 using BDF fonts,
-		corresponding to ftxfont.c
-But, as FreeType already supports BDF fonts, if FreeType and
-Fontconfig are also available on w32, what we need may be:
-	ftw32font.c -- font-driver on w32 directly using FreeType fonts
-		utilizing methods provided by ftfont.c.
-
-And, for those to work, macterm.c and macfns.c must be changed by the
-similar way as xterm.c and xfns.c (the parts "#ifdef USE_FONT_BACKEND"
-... "#endif" should be checked).
-
-It may be interesting if Emacs supports a frame buffer directly and
-have these font driver.
-	ftfbfont.c -- font-driver on FB for FreeType fonts.
-	bdffbfont.c -- font-driver on FB for BDF fonts.
-
-Note: The fontset related codes are not yet matured to work well with
-the font backend method.  So, for instance, even if you start Emacs
-as something like this:
-  % emacs -fn tahoma
-Non-ASCII Latin characters will not be displayed by the font "tahoma".
-In such a case, please try this:
-
-(set-fontset-font "fontset-default" 'latin '("tahoma" . "unicode-bmp"))
-
-
-This file is part of GNU Emacs.
-
-GNU Emacs is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
-it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
-the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option)
-any later version.
-
-GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
-but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
-MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
-GNU General Public License for more details.
-
-You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
-along with GNU Emacs; see the file COPYING.  If not, write to the
-Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
-Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.