Re: mandoc and UTF-8 support.

[Kristaps Dzonsons <kristaps@bsd.lv>]

> kr>  Hiroki (note CC'd to the mdocml mailing list),
> kr>
> kr>  This regards today's conversation about mdocml and Japanese characters
> kr>  at the FreeBSD summit.
> kr>
> kr>  Enclosed is a screenshot of a locally-modified mandoc producing
> kr>  on-terminal UTF-8 glyphs for kanji (I have NO IDEA what these
> kr>  characters mean, I just picked them from the Unicode reference).  I
> kr>  hacked this in as a demonstrandum that it's possible to have UTF-8
> kr>  output without much effort.
>
>   Great, it seems to work.
>
> kr>  I used the groff \U'xxxx' input escape sequence to specify Unicode
> kr>  input.  Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be officially supported by
> kr>  groff.
> kr>
> kr>    http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2000-04/msg00036.html
> kr>
> kr>  My question is this: do you know of the most reliable to feed groff
> kr>  Unicode codepoints?  I'm not sure when a -Tutf8 will exist for mandoc,
> kr>  but the screenshot demonstrates that it's in principle possible.
>
>   I tried UTF-8 characters directly only but it was a long time ago so
>   I don't remember the details.  I will check the stock version of
>   groff again and give mandoc a try, then contact a manual page
>   maintainer in FreeBSD project about how he feels migration from groff
>   to mandoc, and get back to you.
>
>   And, what do I do to subscribe this mailing-list?  I could not find
>   information on in at bsd.lv page.

Hiroki,

Send mail to discuss+subscribe@mdocml.bsd.lv to subscribe.

Regarding groff, their underlying Unicode input method is detailed here:

  http://mdocml.bsd.lv/archives/tech/0368.html

groff also has support for arbitrary encodings by piping the output of 
preconv (a groff preprocessor translating multi-byte characters, like 
UTF8, into the groff escapes):

  http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/maverick/man1/preconv.1.html

This part I'll consider later.

I'd like to have wide-character support by the next version of mandoc; 
however, I'll post versions here for testing when they're available.

Thanks again,

Kristaps
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