Re: wide vs. complex characters

[Neil Zanella]

On Sun, 15 Oct 2000, Thomas Dickey wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 15, 2000 at 01:10:47AM -0230, Neil Zanella wrote:
> > 
> > The following description is given for cchar_t:
> > 
> > A type that refers to a string consisting of a spacing wide character, up
> > to 5 non-spacing wide characters, and zero or more attributes of any
> > type. See Attributes, Color Pairs, and Renditions. A null cchar_t object
> > terminates arrays of cchar_t objects.
> > 
> > What is the point of cchar_t and why should cchar_t be so wide???
> > Does this have to do with encoding attributes into the characters
> > themselves? And what is the purpose of the spacing wide character?
> 
> as I understand it, they're describing characters which are built up
> by overstriking onto the same box.  So cchar_t is an array of the
> pieces, and they've introduced the notion of non-spacing characters
> to imply that they overstrike.

But when Unicode is used there is no need for overstriking characters.
So characters to be used with overstriking must belong to some character
set other than Unicode. Am I correct? Someone please correct me if I
am wrong. Can someone give me a complete reliable example of a character
set where overstriking is actually used.

Thanks,

Neil