[crossfire] Using UTF-8 in maps

[Mark Wedel]

Raphaël Quinet wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:44:02 -0700, Mark Wedel <mwedel at sonic.net> wrote:
>>   What would be good to help out on this is basic directions in the editor as 
>> needed to embed the UTF8 characters.  Same for some of the more popular editors 
>> so users now how to enter them.
> 
> Nowadays, most Linux systems are configured to use UTF-8 by default so
> most users will not have to change anything from their setup.  This is
> usually done by setting the environment variable LANG to "en_US.UTF-8"
> (or something else than en_US depending on your language).  This can
> also be done with the LC_* variables such as LC_CTYPE.  A few systems
> are still configured with the old "C" locale or "en_US" without UTF-8
> but most distros now default to "en_US.UTF-8". Use the command "locale"
> to check how your system is configured.  If the locale is configured
> correctly, then most editors will save the right UTF-8 byte sequences
> to the file after the user has entered or copied some non-ASCII
> characters.

  Hmmm - my solaris system has my locale as C.  I'd need to look, but it seems 
that the login screen has an option of which locale I'd use.

  These types of steps/checks are what needs to be documented.  A nice test, 
like 'open an editor, put à in that file, and check contents with od -x or the 
like and see what it looks like to make sure it is writing it out in correct form.

> 
> We should probably write something similar to this section of the GIMP
> developers FAQ:  http://developer.gimp.org/faq.html#id2467550

  Yep - that would be good.

>>   And lastly, we probably need to update the documentation that UTF8 is the 
>> proper codes to use, and the maps updated.  For documentation, those hints on 
>> how to enter those characters would be useful.
> 
> Right.  UTF-8 will be mostly useful for those like me who want to use
> accented characters to write their name correcly.  It is likely that
> those users have a keyboard with keys for entering these accented
> characters directly, or they know other ways to enter them anyway.
> Others who want to write a few accented characters can copy them from
> the character map (Linux or Windows) or from a character picker
> applet (Linux).

  Yep - I think there are also a few items that have those characters in their 
name (mjollnir comes to mind, with the o having a / through it)

> 
> I think that the usage of UTF-8 in the source code and in the maps
> should be limited to the accented characters that we really need.
> Even if UTF-8 supports it, I don't think that we should start
> entering strings in runic alphabet, hieroglyphs or linear-B because
> it is likely that most users will not have the right fonts to
> display these strange characters.  So let's keep it simple.  Besides,
> if we want to write strange text in maps, we already have the media
> tag [strange] for that.

  Yep - aside from folks not having supporting it, also need to have a clear 
meaning if such characters were in use.

  In most cases, things like runic alphabets, which just use character image 
substitution, just gets old really quickly (ok, that symbols is A, that is B, 
etc, and now you can read the message, but just have to do it on your own)