Re: sensible-x-terminal and x-terminal-emulator

[Robert Bihlmeyer <robbe@orcus.priv.at>]

Tomohiro KUBOTA <kubota@surfchem0.riken.go.jp> writes:

> Though my sensible-x-terminal is essential for Asian language
> speakers, it can be used for users' preference.

I think aliases or scripts are enough for that, and they work even on
non-Debian-sytems (I try not to rely to heavily on Debian/Linux
idiosyncracies, as I have accounts on various systems).

But I won't be put off if $XTERMINAL stays in.

> Did you install locales package?  And more, you know, for example, 
> LANG=de is not a correct specifiaction.  LANG=de_DE is correct.

Yes, that was the problem. Although e.g. zh_CN still brings the same
message, even though /usr/share/local/zh_CN exists.

> Though gettext works for LANG=de, I think the behavior of gettext
> is against standard and it can be regarded as a bug.

I don't think so. The Single Unix specification lists (in its
"Environment Variables" chapter) a format of

  language[_territory][.codeset]

for these variables.

> > Just divert /usr/bin/x-terminal-emulator, install your s-x-t under
> > this name (or symlink to it), and call the original version from
> > s-x-t.
> 
> One problem.  s-x-t wants to fall into x-t-e if no $XTERMIAL is available
> and no language-specific terminal is available.  If s-x-t calls x-t-e
> and x-t-e is a link to s-x-t, it makes an infinite loop.

s-x-t should not call x-t-e, but the original (diverted) version of
x-t-e. For example, if you used
  dpkg-divert --package sensible-x-terminal --divert \
  /usr/bin/x-terminal-emulator.insensible /usr/bin/x-terminal-emulator
you should call "/usr/bin/x-terminal-emulator.insensible".

> I think the best way is all X terminal emulators will be sensible
> to LC_CTYPE locale and can display ASCII, ISO8859-*, ISO2022-*,
> EUC-*, UTF-8, and so on.

I don't think this will happen until the handling of those characters
is made as easy by Xlib as the munging of ASCII. It's not for so long
that 8-bit-cleanliness has been accepted as a virtue. Not even in
theory I know what I have to care for to make my X apps work with
non-8859 charsets.

Its probably the fate of Asians to nag us character-impaired
Westerners until we get it.

-- 
Robbe