From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Stefan Monnier Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Emacspeak and UTF-8 -- possible? Date: Thu, 09 Aug 2007 13:44:41 -0400 Message-ID: References: <1186169058.124273.9230@w3g2000hsg.googlegroups.com> <87sl6viq3s.fsf@lion.rapttech.com.au> <87tzr9vbf7.fsf@comcast.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1186684840 31003 80.91.229.12 (9 Aug 2007 18:40:40 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2007 18:40:40 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Aug 09 20:40:38 2007 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1IJCw1-0006xd-RD for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 09 Aug 2007 20:40:38 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1IJCw1-0008Oc-Et for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 09 Aug 2007 14:40:37 -0400 Original-Path: shelby.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews.google.com!news2.google.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!local01.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.umontreal.ca!news.umontreal.ca.POSTED!not-for-mail Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 09 Aug 2007 12:44:41 -0500 Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.1.50 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:x0SiHMW+NhxaUI2kEyCw8cB89s4= Original-Lines: 33 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 132.204.27.213 Original-X-Trace: sv3-vsIExvFQ9NDksC6e8q7v2V/9LzYd5bAXk906BP6mTkI9BcTGQM/Sa9022YbYeSCecQvbLHEXFO5IjYo!9CFoBvZMH4JucoecnFCVeQ4w3zUzUcsuVmPqwrzfZvYzjEXbQZnM71iUpbUD9oHYVq0gFZFoQKPG!vRibpkcf27JsfvAJJA== Original-X-Complaints-To: abuse@umontreal.ca X-DMCA-Complaints-To: abuse@umontreal.ca X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.35 Original-Xref: shelby.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:150872 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:46450 Archived-At: >>> Emacspeak AFAIK doesn't support multi-byte characters. The problem is >>> that many speech synthesises, particularly older hardware based ones like >>> the dectalk, don't understand UTF-8 character sets. If you send them >>> a multibyte character, they either lock up, speak garbage or do something >>> else unexpected. >> >> That's not a good reason to prevent display of any other char. > Does any other char mean UTF-8? If this is the case, wouldn't you agree > that it is better to not have UTF-8 support than to not be able to use > the computer because your speech synth locks up unexpectedly and often? No, I'm saying that the place where they placed the check to filter out unwanted chars is wrong. They should have Emacs accept any random encoding as always, and then encode/filter the text they send to the underlying process. Emacs constantly encodes decodes text between different encodings. E.g. If you visit a latin-1 file, it gets decoded into Emacs's internal representation, and when you save it, it gets re-encoded into latin-1 (unless you've decided to change the file's encoding in which case it may be reencoded in any other coding-system). So if the speech process only understands latin-1, they should simply set the coding-system used for that process accordingly and everything should just work. They may encounter difficulties finding the proper coding-system that handles unencodable chars (e.g. cyrillic chars with a latin-1 coding-system) in the way they want (e.g. drop the char altogether or replace it with a "?" or some other special char), but people on emacs-devel@gnu.org will be happy to help resolve those. Stefan