[gentoo-user] Re: -unicode USE flag
> I wonder if anyone could explain the USE flag 'unicode' better than > the Gentoo description located here: > > http://www.gentoo.org/dyn/use-index.xml > > unicode Adds support for Unicode > > I think the person who wrote this knows too much. ;-) > > What is unicode and why might an end user want it or need it? What the "unicode"-use-flag does, depends on the package you emerge. For example while emergeing baselayout, it turns on a switch in /etc/rc.conf - nothing more. On the other hand, while emerge mc, it turns on the support of mc (Midnight Command) for a unicode/utf8-console. And if you emerge wxGTK, the unicode-use-flag triggers the build of the unicode-aware version of wxGTK. So in general, i prefer my console- and my X11-apps to have unicode support. So i have the use-flag turned on, but i disabled it for baselayout since i use a non-utf8 locale. Greetings Sven signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
[gentoo-user] Re: -unicode USE flag
> Sorry - I thought it was clear from my description. Everyone is > using the word 'unicode' in the definition of 'unicode', or so it is > seeming to me. I've managed to get far enough to understand it's a > different way of expressing font usage, I guess, but I don't > understand when someone would want it or when they would not need it. do you know utf8, do you know latin1, ISO-8859-15 or other things like these? Anyway: unicode ist an approach to assign one number to each "letter" or "sign" that is out there in the world. That's all. Well, in latin1/ISO-8859-1 you only have a basic rule: 1 byte per character You see? Only 1 byte, only 256 numbers and so only space for 256 characters - but there are >3000 chinesese symbols. So latin1 is a european charset and it contains most of the character/signs europeans need. But the trouble is: if an application internally works with latin1 only, how should it reprensent the chinese symbols? Think of your webbrowser: you can use it, to view european pages and also chinese pages. Yes, your browser uses unicode internally and that's very practical, because in unicode, he can represent every character/sign that's out there. Greetings, Sven signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: -unicode USE flag
On 5/13/06, Sven Köhler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I wonder if anyone could explain the USE flag 'unicode' better than > the Gentoo description located here: > > http://www.gentoo.org/dyn/use-index.xml > > unicode Adds support for Unicode > > I think the person who wrote this knows too much. ;-) > > What is unicode and why might an end user want it or need it? What the "unicode"-use-flag does, depends on the package you emerge. For example while emergeing baselayout, it turns on a switch in /etc/rc.conf - nothing more. On the other hand, while emerge mc, it turns on the support of mc (Midnight Command) for a unicode/utf8-console. And if you emerge wxGTK, the unicode-use-flag triggers the build of the unicode-aware version of wxGTK. So in general, i prefer my console- and my X11-apps to have unicode support. So i have the use-flag turned on, but i disabled it for baselayout since i use a non-utf8 locale. Greetings Sven Sven, Thanks for the descriptions. However what I asked was 'What is unicode and why might an end user want it or need it?" and not "What does enabling a unicode flag for a specific emerge do?" Sorry - I thought it was clear from my description. Everyone is using the word 'unicode' in the definition of 'unicode', or so it is seeming to me. I've managed to get far enough to understand it's a different way of expressing font usage, I guess, but I don't understand when someone would want it or when they would not need it. Is there a Gentoo doc somewhere that I haven't read yet that says 'If you are in the U.S. and use Gentoo on a mostly desktop system browsing the web, etc., then you should enable unicode', etc.? Thanks, Mark Thanks, Mark -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
