Re: curses vs non-ASCII

[Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

> I know that the internationalisation stuff is hard and that there is
> a presumption that if you move away from the C locale that you
> implicitly know what you are doing.

I'd love to have no occasion to move away from the C locale...but
curses in the C locale no longer works the way it used to, and, in at
least this case, the difference is a lose.

> Though it really could be argued that the old behaviour is broken
> since it breaks the terminal independence aspect,

Presuming that the user-set locale accurately describes the terminal is
different only in detail from presuming that the octets the user's
program displays are actually characters to the terminal.  If you
really want to argue terminal independence, you end up with this stuff
belonging in termcap (or whatever its latest respin is called this
week), not in the locale.

> [...], I guess by setting the locale you are indicating that you have
> a screen that is capable of interpreting the character set that you
> are attempting to display on it.

True as far as it goes.  I could equally well say of the former
behaviour "I guess by trying to display a character you are indicating
that you have a screen that is capable of displaying it as you
want".

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