emacs/admin/notes/unicode

                                            -*-mode: text; coding: utf-8;-*-

Copyright (C) 2002-2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
See the end of the file for license conditions.

Problems, fixmes and other unicode-related issues
-------------------------------------------------------------

Notes by fx to record various things of variable importance.  handa
needs to check them -- don't take too seriously, especially with
regard to completeness.

 * SINGLE_BYTE_CHAR_P returns true for Latin-1 characters, which has
   undesirable effects.  E.g.:
   (multibyte-string-p (let ((s "x")) (aset s 0 ?£) s)) => nil
   (multibyte-string-p (concat [?£])) => nil
   (text-char-description ?£) => "M-#"

	These examples are all fixed by the change of 2002-10-14, but
	there still exist questionable SINGLE_BYTE_CHAR_P in the
	code (keymap.c and print.c).

 * Rationalize character syntax and its relationship to the Unicode
   database.  (Applies mainly to symbol an punctuation syntax.)

 * Fontset handling and customization needs work.  We want to relate
   fonts to scripts, probably based on the Unicode blocks.  The
   presence of small-repertoire 10646-encoded fonts in XFree 4 is a
   pain, not currently worked round.

	With the change on 2002-07-26, multiple fonts can be
	specified in a fontset for a specific range of characters.
	Each range can also be specified by script.  Before using
	ISO10646 fonts, Emacs checks their repertories to avoid such
	fonts that don't have a glyph for a specific character.

	fx has worked on fontset customization, but was stymied by
	basic problems with the way the default face is dealt with
	(and something else, I think).  This needs revisiting.

 * Work is also needed on charset and coding system priorities.

 * The relevant bits of latin1-disp.el need porting (and probably
   re-naming/updating).  See also cyril-util.el.

 * Quail files need more work now the encoding is largely irrelevant.

 * What to do with the old coding categories stuff?

 * The preferred-coding-system property of charsets should probably be
   junked unless it can be made more useful now.

 * find-multibyte-characters needs looking at.

 * Implement Korean cp949/UHC, BIG5-HKSCS and any other important missing
   charsets.

 * Lazy-load tables for unify-charset somehow?

	Actually, Emacs clears out all charset maps and unify-map just
	before dumping, and they are loaded again on demand by the
	dumped emacs.  But, those maps (char tables) generated while
	temacs is running can't be removed from the dumped emacs.

 * iso-2022 charsets get unified on i/o.

	With the change on 2003-01-06, decoding routines put `charset'
	property to decoded text, and iso-2022 encoder pay attention
	to it.  Thus, for instance, reading and writing by
	iso-2022-7bit preserve the original designation sequences.
	The property name `preferred-charset' may be better?

	We may have to utilize this property to decide a font.

 * Revisit locale processing: look at treating the language and
   charset parts separately.  (Language should affect things like
   spelling and calendar, but that's not a Unicode issue.)

 * Handle Unicode combining characters usefully, e.g. diacritics, and
   handle more scripts specifically (à la Devanagari).  There are
   issues with canonicalization.

 * We need tabular input methods, e.g. for maths symbols.  (Not
   specific to Unicode.)

 * Need multibyte text in menus, e.g. for the above.  (Not specific to
   Unicode -- see Emacs etc/TODO, but now mostly works with gtk.)

 * There's currently no support for Unicode normalization.

 * Populate char-width-table correctly for Unicode characters and
   worry about what happens when double-width charsets covering
   non-CJK characters are unified.

 * There are type errors lurking, e.g. in
   Fcheck_coding_systems_region.  Define ENABLE_CHECKING to find them.

 * Old auto-save files, and similar files, such as Gnus drafts,
   containing non-ASCII characters probably won't be re-read correctly.


Source file encoding
--------------------

Most Emacs source files are encoded in UTF-8 (or in ASCII, which is a
subset), but there are a few exceptions, listed below.  Perhaps
someday many of these files will be converted to UTF-8, for
convenience when using tools like 'grep -r', but this might need
nontrivial changes to the build process.

 * chinese-big5

     These are verbatim copies of files taken from external sources.
     They haven't been converted to UTF-8.

	leim/CXTERM-DIC/4Corner.tit
	leim/CXTERM-DIC/ARRAY30.tit
	leim/CXTERM-DIC/ECDICT.tit
	leim/CXTERM-DIC/ETZY.tit
	leim/CXTERM-DIC/PY-b5.tit
	leim/CXTERM-DIC/Punct-b5.tit
	leim/CXTERM-DIC/QJ-b5.tit
	leim/CXTERM-DIC/ZOZY.tit
	leim/MISC-DIC/CTLau-b5.html
	leim/MISC-DIC/cangjie-table.b5

 * chinese-iso-8bit

     These are verbatim copies of files taken from external sources.
     They haven't been converted to UTF-8.

	leim/CXTERM-DIC/CCDOSPY.tit
	leim/CXTERM-DIC/Punct.tit
	leim/CXTERM-DIC/QJ.tit
	leim/CXTERM-DIC/SW.tit
	leim/CXTERM-DIC/TONEPY.tit
	leim/MISC-DIC/pinyin.map
	leim/MISC-DIC/CTLau.html
	leim/MISC-DIC/ziranma.cin

 * cp850

     This file contains non-ASCII characters in unibyte strings.  When
     editing a keyboard layout it's more convenient to see 'é' than
     '\202', and the MS-DOS compiler requires the single byte if a
     backslash escape is not being used.

	src/msdos.c

 * iso-2022-cn-ext

     This file is externally generated from leim/MISC-DIC/cangjie-table.b5
     by Big5->CNS converter.  It hasn't been converted to UTF-8.

	leim/MISC-DIC/cangjie-table.cns

 * iso-latin-2

     These files are processed by csplain, a program that requires
     Latin-2 input.  In 2012 the csplain maintainers started
     recommending UTF-8, but these files haven't been converted yet.

	etc/refcards/cs-dired-ref.tex
	etc/refcards/cs-refcard.tex
	etc/refcards/cs-survival.tex
	etc/refcards/sk-dired-ref.tex
	etc/refcards/sk-refcard.tex
	etc/refcards/sk-survival.tex

 * japanese-iso-8bit

     SKK-JISYO.L is a verbatim copy of a file taken from an external source.
     ja-dic.el is generated automatically by skkdic-convert; this process
     hasn't been converted to use UTF-8.

	leim/SKK-DIC/SKK-JISYO.L
	leim/ja-dic/ja-dic.el

 * japanese-shift-jis

     This is a verbatim copy of a file taken from an external source.
     It hasn't been converted to UTF-8.

	admin/charsets/mapfiles/cns2ucsdkw.txt

 * no-conversion

     This file purposely contains arbitrary bytes interspersed within text,
     to test whether the Emacs distribution is corrupted.

	lib-src/testfile

 * iso-2022-7bit

     These files contain characters that cannot be encoded in UTF-8.

	leim/quail/tibetan.el
	leim/quail/ethiopic.el
	lisp/international/titdic-cnv.el
	lisp/language/tibetan.el
	lisp/language/tibet-util.el
	lisp/language/ind-util.el


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