Subject: Re: kernel tty patches - msg#00107

Hi,

At Fri, 26 Jan 2001 15:51:23 +0000,
Markus Kuhn <Markus.Kuhn@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I don't have a very strong opinion on the subject (and probably neither
> has ECMA-48), but I'd rather prefer if backspace moved the cursor one
> (non-combining) character width to the left. How many single-width cells
> this corresponds to (1 or 2) depends on the character left of the active
> position before the backspace is processed. I understand that this is
> not how CJK terminal emulators implement backspace at the moment, but I
> still think it is the cleaner approach, and it would keep the kernel
> (and many many similar trivial line editors) free of having to worry
> about wcwidth. Line/word erasure can similarly be implemented without
> wcwidth awareness if backspace moved over character positions, not cell
> widths.


Even if you think your way is cleaner and simpler, it is mere an
armchair theory. On the other hand, my opinion expresses practical
real daily need of CJK people. How strongly you stress the merit
of your opinion, it cannot deny the existence of softwares which are
all based on 'backspace code erases one _column_ everytime'.

If we would take your opinion, every softwares (including open source,
proprietary, new, old, Unix, Windows, Macintosh, and so on so on)
would have to be rewritten. All of them must be rewritten at the
same time because traditional softwares and your ones cannot co-exist.
It is completely absolutely impossible. This compatibility is so
important that we should not consider such a small cleanness of
your opinion.

I think there is no room for discussion, unless you wanted CJK people
to fall into panic. I believe you don't want such a thing.

---
Tomohiro KUBOTA <kubota@xxxxxxxxxx>
http://surfchem0.riken.go.jp/~kubota/
"Introduction to I18N"
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/intro-i18n/
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Linux-UTF8: i18n of Linux on all levels
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