Re: idn.el and confusables.txt

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
> Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 16:42:57 -0300
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> > IMHO idn.el and confusables.txt should go into the Emacs trunk so they
> > can generate first-class character properties for `C-u x ='.  Stefan,
> > Chong, what do you think?
> 
> I don't know enough about the way we handle Unicode tables to know.

We create char-tables from them.  But I'm not sure I understand the
question, so maybe my answer is not helpful.

> It does sound like confusables.txt could be turned into
> a lisp/international/uni-confusables.el, but I don't know whether there
> is a large benefit from having it part of Emacs as opposed to having it
> in GNU ELPA.  As for idn.el, I haven't seen the file, and don't know
> what uses it, so I can't judge.

What is idn.el? where can I see it?  And how and where would we like
to use it?  I searched the relevant threads (which were all spin-offs
of other threads, which didn't help searching for the info), but
didn't find any pointers.  Apologies if I missed something.

You see, the uni-*.el files we create out of the Unicode DB are not
used anywhere in application code, AFAIK.  We use them to display
character properties in the likes of "C-u C-x =", and that's it.  I'm
not even sure they are organized in a way that makes them useful.
E.g., when I needed to use the Unicode bidirectional properties for
bidi reordering, I eventually was forced to create my own tables (see
src/biditype.h and src/bidimirror.h, and the corresponding Awk scripts
in admin/unidata/) which lend themselves well to using them in
real-life code.

So I'd really like to avoid introducing yet another huge table whose
only effects are to show one more property in "C-u C-x =" and bloat
the ELisp manual some more.

Can we please have some preliminary ideas and design for using the
"confusables" information and the IDNA protocol in Emacs, before we
decide whether and how to include them?