summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/admin/notes/unicode
blob: 8ec56698dcd49ee9acf1d2967c90142a507cd9e2 (plain)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
                                            -*-mode: text; coding: utf-8;-*-

Copyright (C) 2002-2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
See the end of the file for license conditions.

Importing a new Unicode Standard version into Emacs
-------------------------------------------------------------

Emacs uses the following files from the Unicode Character Database
(a.k.a. "UCD):

  . UnicodeData.txt
  . BidiMirroring.txt
  . IVD_Sequences.txt

First, these files need to be copied into admin/unidata/, and then
Emacs should be rebuilt for them to take effect.  Rebuilding Emacs
updates several derived files elsewhere in the Emacs source tree,
mainly in lisp/international/.

When Emacs is rebuilt for the first time after importing the new
files, pay attention to any warning or error messages.  In particular,
admin/unidata/unidata-gen.el will complain if UnicodeData.txt defines
new bidirectional attributes of characters, because unidata-gen.el,
bidi.c and dispextern.h need to be updated in that case; failure to do
so will cause aborts in redisplay.

Next, review the changes in UnicodeData.txt vs the previous version
used by Emacs.  Any changes, be it introduction of new scripts or
addition of codepoints to existing scripts, need corresponding changes
in the data used for filling char-script-table, see characters.el
around line 1300.  Other databases and settings in characters.el, such
as the data for char-width-table, might also need changes.

Any new scripts added by UnicodeData.txt will also need updates to
script-representative-chars defined in fontset.el.  Other databases in
fontset.el might also need to be updated as needed.

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

 * japanese-iso-8bit

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

	leim/SKK-DIC/SKK-JISYO.L

 * 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

 * iso-2022-7bit

     This file switches between CJK charsets, which is not encoded in UTF-8.

	etc/HELLO

     Each of these files contains just one CJK charset, but Emacs
     currently has no easy way to specify set-charset-priority on a
     per-file basis, so converting any of these files to UTF-8 might
     change the file's appearance when viewed by an Emacs that is
     operating in some other language environment.

	etc/tutorials/TUTORIAL.ja
	lisp/international/ja-dic-cnv.el
	lisp/international/ja-dic-utl.el
	lisp/international/kinsoku.el
	lisp/international/kkc.el
	lisp/international/titdic-cnv.el
	lisp/language/japan-util.el
	lisp/language/japanese.el
	lisp/leim/quail/cyril-jis.el
	lisp/leim/quail/hanja-jis.el
	lisp/leim/quail/japanese.el
	lisp/leim/quail/py-punct.el
	lisp/leim/quail/pypunct-b5.el
	lisp/term/x-win.el

     This file contains just Chinese characters, and has same problem.
     Also, it contains characters that cannot be encoded in UTF-8.

	lisp/international/titdic-cnv.el

 * utf-8-emacs

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

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


This file is part of GNU Emacs.

GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with GNU Emacs.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.