From: Robert Strandh strandh@labri.fr
I have another question:
- What's the state of unicode support with McCLIM. I guess this is
backend specific, since SBCL supports unicode strings very nicely. I use McCLIM on Mac OS X and non ASCII keys don't produce anything in McCLIM. Perhaps this is a problem with Mac OS X's X11 server? I've looked into 'freetype' font rendering and (I think) it assumes that char-code is < 256. Is there any unicode support in McCLIM?
There are two distinct issues, input and output.
Output is relatively easy. If we use mcclim-freetype or mcclim-truetype, things work fine it seems. You just need a Unicode font with all the glyphs. For native X11 (bitmap I guess) fonts, it is more complicated, because such fonts are limited to 16-bit glyph numbers, so we need a system for creating groups of fonts and choices of fonts depending on code points that would render in a pleasant way, and I am told this is hard because it depends on the language.
Input is trickier and depends on the backend. Our current problem is that the CLX backend doesn't support the XKEYBOARD extension (I am just repeating what others have told me here), so the McCLIM CLX backend doesn't either. Perhaps the good thing to do is to extend CLX with XKEYBOARD support.
I have posted patches to both CLX and McCLIM enabling XKB and layout switching about a year ago. Unfortunately, while they still apply, they appear to have bitrotten, and while the X layout switching keystroke appears to have effect, inputting any foreign character freezes McCLIM.
If anyone wants to take it from where I left it, here goes.
Sorry if it is an offensive way to publish that, but, for what it's worth, the changes can be accessed via git:
git://git.feelingofgreen.ru/mcclim, 'xkb-support' branch
and
git://git.feelingofgreen.ru/clx, 'xkb-support' branch
regards, Samium Gromoff -- _deepfire-at-feelingofgreen.ru O< ascii ribbon campaign - stop html mail - www.asciiribbon.org