From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Display of undisplayable characters: \U01F3A8 instead of diamond Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2022 09:45:02 +0300 Message-ID: <834jxz33m9.fsf@gnu.org> References: Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:116.202.254.214"; logging-data="3239"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: rms@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Fri Aug 26 08:47:36 2022 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1oRT7w-0000jP-Gr for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Fri, 26 Aug 2022 08:47:36 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:48412 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1oRT7v-0006YJ-0A for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Fri, 26 Aug 2022 02:47:35 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:46308) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1oRT5G-0005ij-H7 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 26 Aug 2022 02:44:50 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::e]:49018) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1oRT5G-0002TH-8i for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 26 Aug 2022 02:44:50 -0400 DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; q=dns/txt; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gnu.org; s=fencepost-gnu-org; h=References:Subject:In-Reply-To:To:From:Date: mime-version; bh=mtNsrXb6ewdgFXd/6mgfDx5OJvaJktYIO7UkzyV8keM=; b=gCC7NUSCdKcM 6jZ/j27mU02UnOQUHoGfLiwzer84yAugpOVbAznWCvcWXIFUvFSpTRak/5i3zLE6r+QSNtWO3JO7Z YIcsfmqdPkpCxYZ66uKY0j3WFuUcDKaCgaCQSwlLbhvUgMEDYzFkfeM/joXrJJVQqD+6qd/ZzSJOO JWTJQ/3Fa3iGitzrXtYAFm5xTLyzO78pPVgdXnzW0eQHjMYuz0qTDK5JlL9ob/YSEcBroqmYoudDG kYz3RaBWrmZ2ARknn4skWxSvLeSmrrmhyiWzKMycLUzNrUWFWe2EJXErmxWdYVrtrcb9Zy+t39PFQ wjwXDUTr2Mwx4/hytHAnsA==; Original-Received: from [87.69.77.57] (port=3123 helo=home-c4e4a596f7) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtpsa (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1oRT5F-0005pu-Aw; Fri, 26 Aug 2022 02:44:49 -0400 In-Reply-To: (message from Richard Stallman on Thu, 25 Aug 2022 23:33:57 -0400) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.29 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:294130 Archived-At: > From: Richard Stallman > Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2022 23:33:57 -0400 > > The text-based Linux console is unable to display many Unicode > characters. In Emacs 29, display of undisplayable characters has > changed. It used to show them with a diamond. Now it shows the > unicode character code as hex, preceded by \U. > > I find that change quite inconvenient. It makes the text harder to > read. Showing the codes does no good, since I don't know these codes, > not even for characters I am familiar with. To find out what > character a code represents, I have to use C-u C-x =, just as I did > before. This is a standard Emacs way of displaying unsupported characters on TTY frames. I fail to see how this is worse than displaying the same diamond glyph for any unsupported character, because with the character codes you at least know when the characters are different, even without "C-u C-x =". You can have some (many) of the characters show in a more readable form by invoking "M-x latin1-display-ucs-per-lynx RET". The particular character you mentioned is not affected by that, though. Is this specifically about that U+1F3A8 character? Or is this more general? > I last built the sources in May. Has this changed in a significant > way since then? I don't think so, but I don't have access to the Linux console to check. > I could not find, in NEWS, anything about this change -- it ought to > be in NEWS . >From my POV, it's a bugfix, and we don't call out those in NEWS. What you saw before was a bug in the way Emacs detected which characters the Linux console is capable of displaying. > Nor a way to go back to the old > behavior. Is there a way? If not, would people please create a way? What would you want Emacs to do instead? Writing a code of an unsupported character to a text-mode terminal is out of the question: it can easily mess up the entire display. What else is possible that would satisfy you? > As a separate question, do users generally like this change? > Would it be better to return to the old diamond method as the default? I don't use the Linux console, so I cannot answer that.