Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754672AbYC2RF1 (ORCPT ); Sat, 29 Mar 2008 13:05:27 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1753104AbYC2RFT (ORCPT ); Sat, 29 Mar 2008 13:05:19 -0400 Received: from terminus.zytor.com ([198.137.202.10]:33925 "EHLO terminus.zytor.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752715AbYC2RFS (ORCPT ); Sat, 29 Mar 2008 13:05:18 -0400 Message-ID: <47EE76BD.2000708@zytor.com> Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2008 10:05:01 -0700 From: "H. Peter Anvin" User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.12 (X11/20080226) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: David Newall CC: Jan Engelhardt , "John T." , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: UTF-8 and Alt key in the console References: <205509.99433.qm@web45710.mail.sp1.yahoo.com> <47ED7EBD.8070009@zytor.com> <47ED8C13.5060509@zytor.com> <47EDE2A4.8080702@davidnewall.com> In-Reply-To: <47EDE2A4.8080702@davidnewall.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1189 Lines: 26 David Newall wrote: > Jan Engelhardt wrote: >> What do you mean by self-terminating? There is no easy >> synchronization like in UTF-8, given you are anywhere inside >> a text stream, how do you know (a) you are already in an >> escape sequence and (b) how to figure out the rebegin of >> normal text. > > It's not very useful being able to tell you are inside a escape sequence > unless you see that sequence from the start. You do need the complete > sequence to make sense of it. I think what Jan is alluding to is the property of UTF-8 text that you can start in the middle of a string and either skip an incomplete character or find the beginning of it. If you can search backwards, you can find the beginning of an escape sequence, too; the "skip incomplete" functionality is missing, though, but as you say, isn't actually all that useful in real life *for the applications which use these kinds of escape sequences.* -hpa -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/