Unicode in Sword (was Re: [sword-devel] Copyright Scripture distribution)

Uwe Koloska sword-devel@crosswire.org
Mon, 13 Dec 1999 10:46:52 +0100


Joel wrote on Son, 12 Dez 1999:
>All of the ISO-8859-x encodings are kludges to some extent (6 encodings just
>for the latin character sets); 8 bits is still 8 bits, and in the case of
>ISO-8859 you only really have 7 bits to play with. 
>
>I looked at your page. I don't have an XML browser but I got the idea. I
>also looked at the parent page and It looks like you have had a fair bit of
>experince with Unicode and multilingual issues in general. That got me
>wondering if their are enough people on this list who have enough interest and
>experience to implement Unicode support in the SWORD project. The problem there
>is that there is no Unicode support in C++ without buying or making a library
>for it. My desire is to see Bible software that could be used for just about
>any language (i.e. modules and user interface). This would be a great tool for
>Christians around the world who can't get Bible software in their language. It
>might be that adding support to SWORD is not the best way to go. If so, maybe
>another project could be started under the same umbrella. I am interested in
>anyone's feedback on this. 
>

On freshmeat I have found three libraries that may be of use for unicode issues
in Sword:

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subject: libunicode 0.4
added by: Matthew Parry on Nov 18th 1999, 03:16
license: OpenSource
category: Development/Libraries

homepage: http://apps.freshmeat.net/homepage/939014407/
download: http://apps.freshmeat.net/download/939014407/

description:
libunicode is a set of ANSI-C- and BSD-style string handling functions
for Unicode. It also includes charset conversion functions and can be
made to use Apache's pool structures.

changes:
Many new string-handling functions.

urgency:
low

|> http://freshmeat.net/news/1999/11/18/942913000.html

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subject: libiconv 0.1
added by: Bruno Haible on Dec 09th 1999, 12:08
license: LGPL
category: Development/Libraries

homepage: http://apps.freshmeat.net/homepage/944757708/
download: http://apps.freshmeat.net/download/944757708/

description:
libiconv provides an iconv() implementation for use on systems which
don't have one or whose implementation cannot convert from/to Unicode.
It supports all the important encodings in use today.

changes:
Portability and bug fixes.

urgency:
low

|> http://freshmeat.net/news/1999/12/09/944759304.html

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subject: libutf8 0.6.1
added by: Bruno Haible on Dec 09th 1999, 12:07
license: LGPL
category: Development/Libraries

homepage: http://apps.freshmeat.net/homepage/944757280/
download: http://apps.freshmeat.net/download/944757280/

description:
libutf8 provides UTF-8 locale support for use on systems which don't
have UTF-8 locales or whose UTF-8 locales are unreasonably slow. It
implements the ISO/ANSI C multibyte/wide char API. libutf8 is the easy
and portable way to add UTF-8 locale support to applications without
waiting for glibc-2.2.

changes:
The implemented API is now nearly complete.

urgency:
low

|> http://freshmeat.net/news/1999/12/09/944759266.html

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Hope this helps
Uwe

-- 
mailto:koloska@rcs.urz.tu-dresden.de
http://rcswww.urz.tu-dresden.de/~koloska/
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