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Re: [Groff] new backend for UTF-8 output


From: Werner LEMBERG
Subject: Re: [Groff] new backend for UTF-8 output
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2000 00:40:04 GMT

> You can already input Unicode characters using the N'ddddd' syntax,
> where ddddd is the decimal value. I have two proposals (not
> contained in yesterday's patch) for dealing with that.
> 

> 1. Introduce a convenient hexadecimal input syntax  U'xxxx'
>    where xxxx is the hexadecimal value.
>    Compatibility issue: This would become one more difference
>    between classical troff and groff.

I think this isn't important if a man page is intended for UTF8 since
Unicode isn't supported on a classical troff anyway.

> 2. troff and grotty need to know the metric of the character, but
>    the font files don't contain all of them. I tried to make the 4
>    font files larger, by incorporating 3002 characters (those listed
>    in Markus' TARGET3 file). It worked, but the processing times
>    went up to 6 seconds for troff and 3 additional seconds for
>    grotty, which is unacceptable.  I could provide a patch which
>    computes the metric using a portable unicode_wcwidth function,
>    inside libgroff. 

What about defining ranges for unnamed glyphs in the font files?  At
least for CJK glyphs this would be a convenient solution because all
metrics are identical.

>    But the background problem is: do we want to encourage people to
>    use the whole set of Unicode characters in their groff sources,
>    knowing that the results will be suboptimal for the other output
>    devices?  Or will someday the postscript backend be extended to
>    support these many characters too?

I can imagine support for CID-keyed PS fonts...


    Werner


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