Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site mecc.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!ihnp4!stolaf!umn-cs!mmm!dicomed!mecc!sewilco From: sewilco@mecc.UUCP (Scot E. Wilcoxon) Newsgroups: net.internat,net.unix Subject: intnl: Shell for multiple languages? Message-ID: <376@mecc.UUCP> Date: Sun, 3-Nov-85 01:18:20 EST Article-I.D.: mecc.376 Posted: Sun Nov 3 01:18:20 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 10-Nov-85 09:42:33 EST References: <723@inset.UUCP> <960@erix.UUCP> <1569@hammer.UUCP> <6066@utzoo.UUCP> <224@l5.uucp> Reply-To: sewilco@mecc.UUCP (Scot E. Wilcoxon) Organization: MN Ed Comp Corp, St. Paul, MN Lines: 37 Keywords: foreign language shell Xref: watmath net.internat:38 net.unix:6200 Summary: Start language flexibility with shell I think John's on the right track. We don't need to just decide on a character set representation. We also need to decide what needs to be changed in UNIX. You'll see two similar articles here: character sets and UNIX commands. Application programs which need special character sets will use whatever set they need. Hopefully when they generate a text file for manipulation with a UNIX utility, that utility will have been modified to use it. Eventually there should be a standard character set, and all text-using utilities will handle it. Until then, application programs might have to keep their text to themselves. I think the best place to start international UNIX is in the user program which has the most interaction with the user. That's the shell. Without a multiple-language shell a user can't use the UNIX capabilities in the same way the creators of UNIX intended. (Maybe the traditional shell is not best, but that's a different discussion) Do any non-English shells already exist? In article <224@l5.uucp> gnu@l5.uucp (John Gilmore) writes: >... >Internally to an international program, characters would be 16 bits, >but stdio routines (printw, fprintw, sscanw, etc) would encode to a >bytestream on the way in and out. ("w" for "world" or "wide"). > >(Hmm, the non-Unix-opsys people have been looking for a way to tell when >we Unixoids are reading or writing a text file versus a binary file...now >that we propose encoding our own text files, they will have the clue.) (Qualifications? I speak American, understand British, carry on a stumbling conversation in Portuguese, and can get the gist of a Spanish newspaper article) -- Scot E. Wilcoxon Minn. Ed. Comp. Corp. circadia!mecc!sewilco 45 03 N / 93 15 W (612)481-3507 {ihnp4,mgnetp}!dicomed!mecc!sewilco