Unicodification of sources, part 1

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

>>>>> "Aidan" == Aidan Kehoe <kehoea at parhasard.net> writes:

    Aidan>  Ar an fichi~ l~ de m~ Meitheamh, scr~obh Stephen
    Aidan> J. Turnbull:

    >> The 21.5 Unicode support is seriously twisted around Windows
    >> support and the whole Mule infrastructure.

    Aidan> What? No. Its Windows support has always been irrelevant to
    Aidan> me as a Unix user, it has never got in my way,

I'm not talking about using the code; I'm talking about developing it.

    >> SXEmacs doesn't want any Windows baggage, and probably could
    >> benefit from losing Mule, too. 90% of the Mule-related C code
    >> seems to be devoted to variable-width character gymnastics.

    Aidan> Much like Perl, I imagine. That~s not a disadvantage in
    Aidan> itself.

We have serious problems with efficiency of text manipulations, and
nonnegligible ones with correctness in regexps and syntax tables,
even, at the moment.  Presumably SXEmacs would inherit them if they
ported the current setup.  Redisplay has needed substantial work for
years.  Xft is merely grafted in, and hanging on by a scrap of skin.
The obscurity of current Mule code is an obstacle to working with all
of these.  Mule is everywhere on the critical path to a release for
us.

I hope SXEmacs can avoid that.

    >> or even port Python's architecture. They'll be unable to
    >> compete in the "stubborn Mule" market, sure,

    Aidan> They~ll be also unable to compete in the ~supporting what
    Aidan> existing mulitlingual packages exist~ market, since those
    Aidan> packages are in the main oriented towards Mule. That~s a
    Aidan> bit of a minus.

Granted; I did factor that in when I made my comments, though.


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