Re: RE: A basic question on encoding Latin characters

From: Christopher John Fynn (cfynn@dircon.co.uk)
Date: Wed Sep 29 1999 - 13:47:43 EDT


Robert Brady <robert@ents.susu.soton.ac.uk> wrote:

> Saying "abandon terminals" is not really an adequate solution either, and
> certainly not to UNIX users. Using decomposed characters in the input
> stream breaks things that were possible before. Sure, our metaphor
> couldn't cope with distinguishing "ch" from "c", but one thing it could do
> was distinguish "a-with-ring-above" with "a". We can't do that with things
> normalised to postfix combining characters.

Why not send a control character before the pair indicating <the next two
characters should be combined>? This effectively gives you the same
features as a prefixed combining character, though you have to send
one extra character, and it gives you a combined "ch".

If the terminal has some intelligence you can still type the <combining ring
above> before the <a>. User types combining character, combining character
is held. User types base character,< base character> + <stored combining
character>
is sent (or <control: the next two characters are paired> + <base
character> +
<combining character> is sent.

- Chris



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