Re: Entering Unicode characters

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> CC: schwab@suse.de, monnier@iro.umontreal.ca, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Tue, 09 Feb 2016 19:12:34 -0500
> 
> 	   and Emacs wouldn't know where to find the font even when told
>   > its name.
> 
> Why not?  Emacs could know the usual place where these font files are
> stored, and some Lisp code could find a particular font file
> just like the command that tells the terminal which font to use.

How can it know?  Emacs compiled --without-x doesn't even have
font-related code compiled in.  And even if it had, the terminal
emulator might very well use a different font back-end, which keeps
font information in a different place.  Especially if the terminal
emulator runs on a different OS.

>   > In particular, if you login from another machine, the font used by the
>   > terminal emulator is not accessible at all for Emacs that runs on the
>   > remote.
> 
> In theory, it might not be present on the machine Emacs is running on.
> But in practice, it probably is present, if they are both GNU/Linux.

You can still have different versions of the same font even in this
special case.

> And if the font is NOT present there, you could copy it there and tell
> Emacs the file name to find it in.

So maybe a better solution would be a feature that would tell Emacs
explicitly, by user initiative, which characters are displayable?  The
user would run some utility to find that out, and then communicate the
results to Emacs via some customization.  That sounds more reliable to
me than have Emacs assume something about fonts in two different
places.