From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261970AbULKRIE (ORCPT ); Sat, 11 Dec 2004 12:08:04 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261971AbULKRID (ORCPT ); Sat, 11 Dec 2004 12:08:03 -0500 Received: from mail.gmx.net ([213.165.64.20]:6102 "HELO mail.gmx.net") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id S261970AbULKRHs (ORCPT ); Sat, 11 Dec 2004 12:07:48 -0500 X-Authenticated: #10070094 Subject: Improved console UTF-8 support for the Linux kernel? From: Simos Xenitellis To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Type: text/plain Message-Id: <1102784797.4410.8.camel@kl> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 1.4.6 (1.4.6-2) Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 17:06:38 +0000 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Hi All, The current UTF-8 keyboard input (for the console) of the Linux kernel does not support "composing" or writing characters with accents. This affects quite a few languages that require accents (French, German, Danish, Swedish?, Greek, cyrillic-based?, others?.). In general, UTF-8 console support is good to display text in different character sets, enabling to configure a distribution to use UTF-8 locales for both console/Xorg. However, while it was possible to write in German, Spanish, French, etc, now it is not possible anymore. While looking into the problem, I noticed that there is work to make Linux console handle Unicode better. Two links are of interest A. Improved UTF-8 support for the Linux kernel, by Chris Heath http://chris.heathens.co.nz/linux/utf8.html B. Notes on the Linux console, by Innocenti Maresin http://www.comtv.ru/~av95/linux/console/ Discussion on these issues take place at the linux-utf8 mailing list, archived at http://groups-beta.google.com/group/nlo.lists.linux-utf8 Chris Heath has a set of incremental patches (http://chris.heathens.co.nz/linux/utf8.html) to enhance Unicode for the console. I noticed that he contacted this list in May 2003 (http://seclists.org/lists/linux-kernel/2003/May/7956.html) but unfortunatelly the discussion was diverted to coding styles. Is there an interest for re-submission of mentioned patches for inclusion in the kernel (yeah, provided coding style is "normalised")? Simos p.s. I am not sending this e-mail on behalf of any of the authors, just myself.