[mcclim-devel] another question

[Samium Gromoff]

From: Robert Strandh <strandh at labri.fr>
>  > I have another question:
>  > 
>  > * What's the state of unicode support with McCLIM. I guess this is  
>  > backend specific, since SBCL supports unicode strings very nicely. I  
>  > use McCLIM on Mac OS X and non ASCII keys don't produce anything in  
>  > McCLIM. Perhaps this is a problem with Mac OS X's X11 server? I've  
>  > looked into 'freetype' font rendering and (I think) it assumes that  
>  > char-code is < 256. Is there any unicode support in McCLIM?
> 
> There are two distinct issues, input and output. 
> 
> Output is relatively easy.  If we use mcclim-freetype or
> mcclim-truetype, things work fine it seems.  You just need a Unicode
> font with all the glyphs.  For native X11 (bitmap I guess) fonts, it
> is more complicated, because such fonts are limited to 16-bit glyph
> numbers, so we need a system for creating groups of fonts and choices
> of fonts depending on code points that would render in a pleasant way,
> and I am told this is hard because it depends on the language.
> 
> Input is trickier and depends on the backend.  Our current problem is
> that the CLX backend doesn't support the XKEYBOARD extension (I am
> just repeating what others have told me here), so the McCLIM CLX
> backend doesn't either.  Perhaps the good thing to do is to extend CLX
> with XKEYBOARD support.

I have posted patches to both CLX and McCLIM enabling XKB and layout
switching about a year ago.  Unfortunately, while they still apply,
they appear to have bitrotten, and while the X layout switching keystroke
appears to have effect, inputting any foreign character freezes McCLIM.

If anyone wants to take it from where I left it, here goes.

Sorry if it is an offensive way to publish that, but, for what it's
worth, the changes can be accessed via git:

  git://git.feelingofgreen.ru/mcclim, 'xkb-support' branch

and

  git://git.feelingofgreen.ru/clx, 'xkb-support' branch


regards,
  Samium Gromoff
--
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