Re: UTF-8 in xterm - RFC 2066?

[Markus Kuhn <Markus.Kuhn@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yung-Fong Tang <ftang@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote on 2000-01-24 21:01 UTC:
> I wonder how you swtich to/from UTF-8 mode in the xterm.
> Are you using those thing specified in RFC 2066?
> http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/htbin/rfc/rfc2066..html
> Or something else ? 

xterm sends/receives UTF-8 if and only if 

  - it has been activated with command line option -u8 or
  - the corresponding X resource has been set.

UTF-8 activation options that might be added in the future are:

  - test the POSIX locale (via nl_langinfo(CODESET) == "UTF-8"
    of by searching for the "UTF-8" substring in the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE,
    or LANG environment variables)
  - accept the ESC % G and ESC % @ sequences according to ISO 2022
    and ISO 10646-1

In the far future, we might be able to remove the UTF-8 encoders/
decoders completely from xterm again and leave everything to the Xlib
locale-dependent functions, which unfortunately can't do UTF-8 yet at
this time.

xterm does not participate in the telnet protocol in any way, therefore
RFC 2066 is not relevant for it.

I haven't checked yet, whether C-Kermit 7.0 (implements telnet) supports
RFC 2066. Bruno Haible's telnetd patch on

  ftp://ftp.ilog.fr/pub/Users/haible/utf8/

doesn't use RFC 2066, but is a tiny hack where a special terminal type
signals the use of UTF-8 to the other side.

More information (especially about the ISO 2022 UTF-8 sequences, etc.) on:

  http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/unicode.html

Markus

-- 
Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK
Email: mkuhn at acm.org,  WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>

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