Subject: Any effort putting all things into unicode?
To: None <netbsd-users@netbsd.org>
From: Zhang Weiwu <weiwuzhang@hotmail.com>
List: netbsd-users
Date: 09/13/2003 00:28:50
Hello. I just come to the NetBSD! (Nice to see you guys.)

I have been working three days on installing a simplified Chinese input
method for X-window. It is a nightmare (and it is not over yet).

One problem is the locale. Let's only talk about China mainland locals
(zh_CN): It seems NetBSD supports "zh_CN.eucCN"  while the XFree86 uses
"zh_CN.GBK". (Don't remeber if FreeBSD calls it zh_CN.EUC, ain't there
anyone makeing standard on this?) Basically there are two Chinese XIM
servers, one is the "xcin". Setting locale to zh_CN.GBK makes it reports
"your OS doesn't support zh_CN.GBK", setting locale to zh_CN.ENU or
zh_CN.enuCN makes it complains "I don't understand zh_CN.enuxxxxxx". The
other one is the "chinput". Luckly it doesn't query NetBSD if zh_CN.GBK
is proper, but it has other problems still troubling me. It's another
story though.

There are still lots of problems related to fonts encoding and so like.

I just wonder why, many leading open unix-like OS (BSDs and linux) which
still have LOTS of trouble in I18N don't simply use unicode (say,
utf16le, as used in WinNT all versions) all the way? I've been working
on some unicode-related software before and I like to say unicode is
good. I think if XFree86 decide to rely on unicode then everyone would
follow.