Re: FAQ, German Umlauts

Re: FAQ, German Umlauts

[Wolfgang Hukriede]

Hello!

On Wed, 25 Jun 97 18:40:26 +0200 Uli Zappe <uli@tallowcross.uni-frankfurt.de>
wrote:

> while it is great that zsh is able to deal with the lower case
> German letters
>
> d  (ae)
> v  (oe)
> |  (ue)   and
> _  (ss)
>
> unfortunately it doesn't do so yet with the capital letters
>
> D (AE)
> V  (OE)
> \  (UE)
>
> Does anybody know if this will be fixed in the foreseeable future?

That is, because your (otherwise fabulous) operating-system encodes
Ae as 0205, Oe as 0226, Ue as 0232, which codes are in the range 0200
to 0237. This range does not display anything under the latin-1 encoding.

Now:

On Wed, 25 Jun 1997 15:49:45 +0200 Peter Stephenson <pws@ifh.de> wrote:

> Subject: Z-Shell Frequently Asked Questions (monthly posting)
> Changes since last issue:
>
> 3.6:      New question on displaying eight bit characters.
>
> 3.6: How do I make the completion list use eight bit characters?
>
>   You are probably creating files with non-ASCII characters, such as
>   accented characters, and find they show up in the completion list as
>   \M-i or something such.  This is because the library routines
>   (not zsh itself) which test whether a character is printable have
>   replied that it is not; zsh has simply found a way to show them
>   anyway.
>
>   The answer, under a modern POSIXy operating system, is to find a
>   locale where these are treated as printable characters.  Zsh has
>   handling for locales built in and will recognise when you set a
>   relevant variable. You need to look in /usr/lib/locale to find one
>   which suits you; the subdirectories correspond to the locale names.
>   The simplest possibility is likely to be en_US, so that the simplest
>   answer to your problem is to set
>
>     LC_CTYPE=en_US
>
>   when your terminal is capable of showing eight bit characters.  If
>   you only have a default domain (called C), you may need to have some
>   additional files installed on your system.

Peter, I think you're on the wrong road here. The locale settings cannot
change hardware-properties, can they?

Why don't you just pass through all 8-bit-encodings, or possibly add (yet
another) zsh-option, which at least allows this. You simply cannot tell
something about the users hardware. Even if you get everything right so far,
when say, someone changes his/her terminal font or encoding vector, it's
immediately broken again. If at all, these settings belong under complete
user-control. You're asking way too much from the locale system here.

Wolfgang.

Re: FAQ, German Umlauts

[Peter Stephenson]

> 3.6: How do I make the completion list use eight bit characters?

Wolfgang Hukriede wrote:
> Peter, I think you're on the wrong road here. The locale settings cannot
> change hardware-properties, can they?

The entry is simply about the zsh side of the issue and what you can
do to make zsh print out non-ASCII characters.  Further than that I
can't go in a zsh-related document.

I can, however, make it clearer what has to be available for zsh to be
able to do its part.  I nearly put `in my xterm' at the end of the
question.  I'll add a paragraph at the beginning along the lines of:

  A traditional UNIX environment (character terminal and ASCII
  character sets) is not sufficient to be able to handle non-ASCII
  characters.  However, if you have something like an xterm using a
  standard character set like ISO-8859-1 (which is often the default
  for xterm), read on.  You should also note question link(3.4)(34) on
  the subject of eight bit characters.

In this case the rest of the entry should point you in the right
direction.  If the locales are not set up correctly for the fonts
available on the system, that's a bug in the system installation.

-- 
Peter Stephenson <pws@ifh.de>       Tel: +49 33762 77366
WWW:  http://www.ifh.de/~pws/       Fax: +49 33762 77413
Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron --- Institut fuer Hochenergiephysik Zeuthen
DESY-IfH, 15735 Zeuthen, Germany.

Re: FAQ, German Umlauts

[Uli Zappe]

Peter Stephenson wrote:

> In this case the rest of the entry should point you in the right
> direction.  If the locales are not set up correctly for the fonts
> available on the system, that's a bug in the system installation.

Hmm, on NEXTSTEP, there isn't even a file called /usr/lib/locale,  
and nothing else needs it.

Being no UNIX expert, I'd find it annoying to have to install such  
a file simply to be able to run zsh correctly.

I mean, why the hell can't zsh do without? It *does* get right the  
small German Umlauts, so I don't think there's any reason it  
shouldn't be able to cope with the capital ones without the help of  
some special file.

Anyway, as it is - how would this file /usr/lib/locale have to look  
like for NEXTSTEP to allow capital German Umlauts? From this  
discussion, so far I haven't the slightest idea.

And will it also work with zsh version 2.51 which is the installed  
"default" version in NEXTSTEP which many users haven't changed yet?


                Bye
                        Uli

_____________________________________________________________________

Uli Zappe               E-Mail: uli@tallowcross.uni-frankfurt.de
                                (NeXTMail,Mime,ASCII) PGP on request
Lorscher Strasse 5      WWW:    -
D-60489 Frankfurt       Fon:    +49 (69) 9784 0007
Germany                 Fax:    +49 (69) 9784 0042

staff member of NEXTTOYOU - the German NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP magazine
_____________________________________________________________________

Re: FAQ, German Umlauts

[Peter Stephenson]

Uli Zappe wrote:
> Hmm, on NEXTSTEP, there isn't even a file called /usr/lib/locale,  
> and nothing else needs it.
> 
> Being no UNIX expert, I'd find it annoying to have to install such  
> a file simply to be able to run zsh correctly.

The locale business is the standard way of telling the system what is
a character and what isn't (and all sorts of similar things).  It just
happens to work on a range of `normal' UNIX machines with `normal'
X windows, which is why I wrote the explanation.

It sounds like NEXTSTEP doesn't have that.  Try looking in the `ctype'
manual page to see if there is anything corresponding to it (these are
the routines zsh uses to decide whether something is printable and
most systems refer there to the locale mechanism if it is available).
 
> I mean, why the hell can't zsh do without? It *does* get right the  
> small German Umlauts, so I don't think there's any reason it  
> shouldn't be able to cope with the capital ones without the help of  
> some special file.

Zsh doesn't even decide; the system does and it seems to be getting it
wrong.  To clarify, zsh doesn't need the locale system either, it just
supports it if it is available.

The alternative is Wolfgang Hukriede's suggestion of passing through
all characters.  That's dangerous in general, so it would have to be
an option.

The old zsh, so far as I remember, didn't even have the locale
mechanism, so is unlikely to be able to do non-ASCII characters.  Even
a reasonable attempt at 8-bit characters is fairly new.

-- 
Peter Stephenson <pws@ifh.de>       Tel: +49 33762 77366
WWW:  http://www.ifh.de/~pws/       Fax: +49 33762 77413
Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron --- Institut fuer Hochenergiephysik Zeuthen
DESY-IfH, 15735 Zeuthen, Germany.

Re: FAQ, German Umlauts

[Uli Zappe]

Peter Stephenson wrote:

> The locale business is the standard way of telling the system
> what is a character and what isn't (and all sorts of similar
> things).
[...]
> It sounds like NEXTSTEP doesn't have that.  Try looking in the
> `ctype' manual page to see if there is anything corresponding to
> it

I did: No, there isn't. I.e. actually there is an *object class*  
for that purpose, but obviously zsh doesn't make use of *that*.

> Zsh doesn't even decide; the system does and it seems to be
> getting it wrong.

But zsh is the *only* program with this problem on NEXTSTEP; so it  
can't be as simple as "zsh is right, but NEXTSTEP is wrong"... :-(  
perl, for instance, works perfectly well.

> The old zsh, so far as I remember, didn't even have the locale
> mechanism, so is unlikely to be able to do non-ASCII characters.
> Even a reasonable attempt at 8-bit characters is fairly new.

zsh 2.51 *can* deal perfectly with lower case Umlauts, as I said before.

> To clarify, zsh doesn't need the locale system
> either, it just supports it if it is available.

Does this locale system consist of only the file /usr/lib/locale  
(so that I simply could install such a file), or is there a  
corresponding program that's necessary?

> The alternative is Wolfgang Hukriede's suggestion of passing
> through all characters.  That's dangerous in general, so it would
> have to be an option.

Maybe it's not necessary to really pass thru *all* characters; I  
can't judge, though.

Anyway, what do I have to do to make this option being implemented  
in future versions of zsh?


                Bye
                        Uli

_____________________________________________________________________

Uli Zappe               E-Mail: uli@tallowcross.uni-frankfurt.de
                                (NeXTMail,Mime,ASCII) PGP on request
Lorscher Strasse 5      WWW:    -
D-60489 Frankfurt       Fon:    +49 (69) 9784 0007
Germany                 Fax:    +49 (69) 9784 0042

staff member of NEXTTOYOU - the German NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP magazine
_____________________________________________________________________

Re: FAQ, German Umlauts

[Zefram]

Uli Zappe wrote:
>zsh 2.51 *can* deal perfectly with lower case Umlauts, as I said before.

Does this mean that in your first message you were talking about 2.5.1?
Does 3.0 or later do what you want?

-zefram

Re: FAQ, German Umlauts

[Uli Zappe]

Zefram wrote:

> Does this mean that in your first message you were talking about
> 2.5.1? Does 3.0 or later do what you want?

No, both versions behave exactly the same as far as this problem is  
concerned (otherwise I'd have no problem...).

I just wanted to point out that zsh has been able to deal with  
lower case Umlauts for quite some time (as someone said that even  
this ability was recent)


                Bye
                        Uli

_____________________________________________________________________

Uli Zappe               E-Mail: uli@tallowcross.uni-frankfurt.de
                                (NeXTMail,Mime,ASCII) PGP on request
Lorscher Strasse 5      WWW:    -
D-60489 Frankfurt       Fon:    +49 (69) 9784 0007
Germany                 Fax:    +49 (69) 9784 0042

staff member of NEXTTOYOU - the German NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP magazine
_____________________________________________________________________