Re: problem with utf-8 encoding in Gnus

[Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com>]

This came up on the Gnus development list, but I believe it is a
generic Emacs problem, so please move the discussion to
emacs-devel@gnu.org.  The problem is that some fontsets doesn't
contain all characters, and that users then will have to change
fontset. Generally, I think users want the application (Emacs) to find
a better fontset that actually has the character instead, since it
seems no single fontset is applicable in all situations.

Any chance of getting this supported seamlessly in Emacs?  Does the
Unicode Emacs branch address this problem in any way?

Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:

> On Mon, 25 Nov 2002, jas@extundo.com wrote:
>> Yes.  Your fontset doesn't have the characters.  The following
>> fontset works here:
>> 
>> -Misc-Fixed-Medium-R-Normal--18-120-100-100-C-90-ISO10646-1
>
> I supposed (wrongly) that the bold variant would have the same
> characters as the medium one.  I'm using the ucs-fonts package, and
> the bold variant (7x14B.bdf) is TARGET1, which is the minimal UCS
> range in the ucs-fonts package.  I guess I'll switch to a TARGET3 font
> like the one you mention or 7x14.bdf when I need to view more of the
> UCS range.  It seems like all the bold fonts in the ucs-fonts package
> are TARGET1.
>
> Unfortunately, I don't like the look of the normal variants at all
> (they are too thin) so I'll have to keep switching back and forth.
> I'll ask the maintainer of ucs-fonts about the plans to bring bold
> variants up to TARGET3.
>
> I wonder if Gnus could intelligently switch between a regular and a
> Unicode font as needed.  I know I can do a manual switch with
> shift-Mouse1 as an Emacs function and that's fine, but perhaps Gnus
> could be smart about showing messages with characters unavailable in
> the current fontset.
>
> Thanks
> Ted