README.unicode

   1                                             -*-mode: text; coding: latin-1;-*-
   2
   3 Problems, fixmes and other issues in the emacs-unicode branch
   4 -------------------------------------------------------------
   5
   6 Notes by fx to record various things of variable importance.  handa
   7 needs to check them -- don't take too seriously, especially with
   8 regard to completeness.
   9
  10 _Do take seriously that you don't want this branch unless you're
  11 actually working on it; you risk your data by actually using it._  If
  12 you just want to edit Unicode and/or unify iso-8859 et al, see the
  13 existing support and the extra stuff at
  14 <URL:ftp://dlpx1.dl.ac.uk/fx/emacs/Mule>, mostly now in the CVS trunk.
  15 (Editing support is mostly orthogonal to the internal representation.)
  16
  17  * SINGLE_BYTE_CHAR_P returns true for Latin-1 characters, which has
  18    undesirable effects.  E.g.:
  19    (multibyte-string-p (let ((s "x")) (aset s 0 ?£) s)) => nil
  20    (multibyte-string-p (concat [?£])) => nil
  21    (text-char-description ?£) => "M-#"
  22
  23         These examples are all fixed by the change of 2002-10-14, but
  24         there still exist questionalble SINGLE_BYTE_CHAR_P in the
  25         code (keymap.c and print.c).
  26
  27  * Rationalize character syntax and its relationship to the Unicode
  28    database.  (Applies mainly to symbol an punctuation syntax.)
  29
  30  * Fontset handling and customization needs work.  We want to relate
  31    fonts to scripts, probably based on the Unicode blocks.  The
  32    presence of small-repertoire 10646-encoded fonts in XFree 4 is a
  33    pain, not currently worked round.
  34
  35         With the change on 2002-07-26, multiple fonts can be
  36         specified in a fontset for a specific range of characters.
  37         Each range can also be specified by script.  Before using
  38         ISO10646 fonts, Emacs checks their repertories to avoid such
  39         fonts that don't have a glyph for a specific character.
  40
  41         fx has worked on fontset customization, but was stymied by
  42         basic problems with the way the default face is dealt with
  43         (and something else, I think).  This needs revisiting.
  44
  45  * Work is also needed on charset and coding system priorities.
  46
  47  * The relevant bits of latin1-disp.el need porting (and probably
  48    re-naming/updating).  See also cyril-util.el.
  49
  50  * Quail files need more work now the encoding is largely irrelevant.
  51
  52  * What to do with the old coding categories stuff?
  53
  54  * The preferred-coding-system property of charsets should probably be
  55    junked unless it can be made more useful now.
  56
  57  * find-multibyte-characters needs looking at.
  58
  59  * Implement Korean cp949/UHC, BIG5-HKSCS and any other important missing
  60    charsets.
  61
  62  * Lazy-load tables for unify-charset somehow?
  63
  64         Actually, Emacs clear out all charset maps and unify-map just
  65         before dumping, and their are loaded again on demand the
  66         dumped emacs.  But, those maps (char tables) generated while
  67         temacs is running can't be get rid of from the dumped emacs.
  68
  69  * Translation tables for {en,de}code currently aren't supported.
  70
  71         This should be fixed by the changes of 2002-10-14.
  72
  73  * Defining CCL coding systems currently doesn't work.
  74
  75         This should be fixed by the changes of 2003-01-30.
  76
  77  * iso-2022 charsets get unified on i/o.
  78
  79         With the change on 2003-01-06, decoding routines put `charset'
  80         property to decoded text, and iso-2022 encoder pay attention
  81         to it.  Thus, for instance, reading and writing by
  82         iso-2022-7bit preserve the original designation sequences.
  83         The property name `preferred-charset' may be better?
  84
  85         We may have to utilize this property to decide a font.
  86
  87  * Revisit locale processing: look at treating the language and
  88    charset parts separately.  (Language should affect things like
  89    speling and calendar, but that's not a Unicode issue.)
  90
  91  * Handle Unicode combining characters usefully, e.g. diacritics, and
  92    handle more scripts specifically (à la Devanagari).  There are
  93    issues with canonicalization.
  94
  95  * Bidi is a separate issue with no support currently.
  96
  97  * We need tabular input methods, e.g. for maths symbols.  (Not
  98    specific to Unicode.)
  99
 100  * Need multibyte text in menus, e.g. for the above.  (Not specific to
 101    Unicode -- see Emacs etc/TODO, but now mostly works with gtk.)
 102
 103  * There's currently no support for Unicode normalization.
 104
 105  * Populate char-width-table correctly for Unicode chanaracters and
 106    worry about what happens when double-width charsets covering
 107    non-CJK characters are unified.
 108
 109  * Emacs 20/21 .elc files are currently not loadable.  It may or may
 110    not be possible to do this properly.
 111
 112         With the change on 2002-07-24, elc files generated by Emacs
 113         20.3 and later are correctly loaded (including those
 114         containing multibyte characters and compressed).  But, elc
 115         files generated by 20.2 and the primer are still not loadable.
 116         Is it really worth working on it?
 117
 118  * Rmail won't work with non-ASCII text.  Encoding issues for Babyl
 119    files need sorting out, but rms says Babyl will go before this is
 120    released.
 121
 122  * Gnus still needs some attention, and we need to get changes
 123    accepted by Gnus maintainers...
 124
 125  * There are type errors lurking, e.g. in
 126    Fcheck_coding_systems_region.  Define ENABLE_CHECKING to find them.
 127
 128  * You can grep the code for lots of fixmes.
 129
 130  * Old auto-save files, and similar files, such as Gnus drafts,
 131    containing non-ASCII characters probably won't be re-read correctly.
 132
 133
 134
 135 New font handling mechanism with font backend method
 136 ----------------------------------------------------
 137
 138 This branch now contains new codes for handling fonts by multiple font
 139 backends.  The old font handling codes still exist completely parallel
 140 to the new codes, and the new codes are used only when you configure
 141 Emacs with the argument "--enable-font-backend" and run Emacs with the
 142 same argument.
 143
 144 The configure script, if invoked with "--enable-font-backend", checks
 145 existing of libraries freetype and fontconfig.  If they are both
 146 available, macro "USE_FONT_BACKEND" is defined in src/config.h.
 147 In that case, the exiting of Xft library is checked too.
 148
 149 The new files are:
 150         font.c -- main font handling code.
 151         xfont.c -- font-driver on X for X core fonts.
 152         ftfont.c -- generic font-driver for FreeType fonts.
 153         xftfont.c -- font-driver on X using Xft for FreeType fonts.
 154         ftxfont.c -- font-driver on X not using Xft for FreeType fonts.
 155
 156 So we already have codes for X.  For the other systems (win32 and mac),
 157 it seems that we need these files:
 158         bdffont.c -- generic font-driver for BDF fonts.
 159         w32font.c -- font driver on win32 using Windows native fonts.
 160         w32bdffont.c -- font-driver on win32 using BDF fonts.
 161         atmfont.c -- font-driver on mac using ATM fonts.
 162
 163 It may be interesting if Emacs supports frame buffer directly and have
 164 these font driver.
 165         ftfbfont.c -- font-driver on FB for FreeType fonts.
 166         bdffbfont.c -- font-driver on FB for BDF fonts.
 167
 168 Several other files have "#ifdef USE_FONT_BACKEND ... #endif" at the
 169 place where changed for this new font codes.