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Date:      Tue, 17 Jul 2001 18:28:12 +0000 (UTC)
From:      naddy@mips.inka.de (Christian Weisgerber)
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Unicode support
Message-ID:  <9j203s$1if8$1@kemoauc.mips.inka.de>
References:  <1094291862.20010717184905@web.de>

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Philipp Reichmuth <reichmuth@web.de> wrote:

> Hello Questions crew,

Actually, the people you are looking for probably hang out on the
freebsd-i18n list.

>  I am wondering how far we have got with Unicode support under
>  FreeBSD;

Nowhere, but read on.

>  - Filesystem (Does FFS support UTF8?

Not applicable.  Unix filesystems support all byte values in file
names except 0x2F ('/') and 0, which serve as directory separator
and string terminator, respectively.  So you can just go ahead and
use UTF-8 for file names.

>  - System console (Does the system console support UTF8 screen output
>  and/or keystroke conversion?

No.  UTF-8 screen output is problematical, because the VGA character
mode only supports 256/512 glyphs, although one could use a graphics
mode if desperate, I guess.

> Is UTF8 available as an input encoding on the console?

As far as I can tell, the current keyboard framework is limited to
one octet per key.

> Can I use unicode-based locales?)

No.  This is rather the most serious shortcoming at the moment.

>  - X Windows (Can I use an unicode xterm, even when the system console
>  does NOT support unicode?)

"X Windows"?  Never heard of such a thing.  If you mean X11, see
the X(1) man page for proper ways to refer to it.

Yes, you can use a Unicode xterm.  In fact, if you install XFree86 4,
the standard xterm is already UTF-8-capable (use -u8 to enable) and
some Unicode fonts are included.

-- 
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy@mips.inka.de


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