Questions about multibyte input with zsh

Questions about multibyte input with zsh

[Jordan Breeding]

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Hello,

I mainly use Mac OS X, and on that OS I can usually do a key combo  
like option/alt-i, then o, there are others but that is an easy one.

With that system I can easily input most key combos.

With that in mind here is the current state of my shells:

zsh 4.2.x: I can input the characters directly using the methods  
above, but the multibyte support (at least in the default shell on OS  
X) aren't as good so stuff like going back through history or deleting  
a character on the current command line doesn't work as well

zsh 4.3.x: multibyte support is much improved in general, but I can't  
seem to get the OS X native input method to work, I can only use  
insert-composed-character, this at least works but seems to take me  
longer since I am not used to it

bash 3.1: input using the OS X method works and so does editing the  
history and the current command line

I like zsh more than bash and while having better multibyte support in  
4.3 is nice, but it would be even better if I could still use the OS X  
input method for composed characters.  Is this possible?  If not might  
it be possible in a future 4.3.x version, or in 4.4?

Jordan

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Re: Questions about multibyte input with zsh

[Bart Schaefer]

On Nov 4,  7:17pm, Jordan Breeding wrote:
}
} zsh 4.3.x: multibyte support is much improved in general, but I can't  
} seem to get the OS X native input method to work, I can only use  
} insert-composed-character

My guess would be that the native-input characters are not bound to
anything in ZLE when multibyte is enabled, and zsh is seeing them as
mutli-character sequences rather than as a single multibyte character.

Try adding a few "bindkey -s" commands to bind some of the native-input
byte sequences to insert-composed-character keystroke-sequences.

If that works, we may eventually be able to add something similar to
"bindkey -m" to set up those bindings automatically.

Re: Questions about multibyte input with zsh

[Peter Stephenson]

On Sun, 05 Nov 2006 11:08:00 -0800
Bart Schaefer <schaefer@brasslantern.com> wrote:
> On Nov 4,  7:17pm, Jordan Breeding wrote:
> }
> } zsh 4.3.x: multibyte support is much improved in general, but I can't  
> } seem to get the OS X native input method to work, I can only use  
> } insert-composed-character
> 
> My guess would be that the native-input characters are not bound to
> anything in ZLE when multibyte is enabled, and zsh is seeing them as
> mutli-character sequences rather than as a single multibyte character.
> 
> Try adding a few "bindkey -s" commands to bind some of the native-input
> byte sequences to insert-composed-character keystroke-sequences.

This seems like a good guess... if you don't know what to do, try typing
"read<Return>" then hitting one of the sequences you want zsh to handle.
These should show up interpreted by the terminal (things like "^[[15~"
etc. etc.)  These are the strings zsh will get.  If you post these
together with the Unicode characters the sequences represent we might be
able to work out what's going on.

It may even be documented somewhere...

-- 
Peter Stephenson <p.w.stephenson@ntlworld.com>
Web page now at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/p.w.stephenson/