[Fwd]: Aspell and Unicode

----- Forwarded message from Kevin Atkinson <kevina-mXXj517/[email protected]> -----

 > Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2004 05:16:43 -0500 (EST)
 > From: Kevin Atkinson <kevina-mXXj517/[email protected]>
 > Subject: Aspell and Unicode
 > To: [email protected]
 > Cc: gnu-malayalam-discuss-sT238yk/[email protected]
 > 
 > 
 > Lets try this again.....
 > 
 > The Aspell LIBRARY supports Unicode fairly well.  All one has to do is set 
 > the encoding and everything is converted on the fly.
 > 
 > The Aspell UTILITY doesn't really support Unicode at this time.  Although
 > if you set the encoding to UTF-8 the 'PIPE' mode will probably work and
 > the 'CHECK' mode will sort of work.  The issue with the 'check' mode is
 > using Unicode with the curses library correctly.
 > 
 > The REST of the Aspell utility does not support Unicode.  The encoding 
 > used is whatever the dictionary is encoded in.
 > 
 > INTERNALLY the core Aspell library (everything in modules/speller/default) 
 > is 8-bit and is very likely to stay that way.
 > 
 > However, that DOESN'T mean that the end user has to know this.  
 > Everything read in by Aspell and everything printed out can be in UTF-8 or
 > some other encoding.  The only person that REALLY has to be aware of the
 > 8-bit issue is the dictionary maintainers as they must chose an 8-bit
 > character set for Aspell to use.  Even the word list can be in Unicode as
 > Aspell can convert it when creating the dictionary.
 > 
 > But, Aspell is not there yet.  There are several issues in supporting 
 > Unicode.  The main issue is converting everything read in and printed out 
 > from the internal 8-bit encoding to Unicode.  But an other issue is 
 > knowing what encoding the various data files are in.  There is no 
 > reason they can't be in Unicode but Aspell has to know to convert it.  
 > Thus they need to be tagged in someway.  By data files I mean any human 
 > readable files that Aspell uses.
 > 
 > Ideally the Aspell utility use the LC_CTYPE for the encoding, however 
 > using LC_CTYPE to figure out how the data files are encoded will lead to 
 > nothing but trouble.
 > 
 > So, I HOPE to get all this done by Aspell 0.51 but I don't know if I will.  
 > If someone would like to assist me in this task I would really appreciate 
 > it.
 > 
 > I hope this makes everything clear, as I was not very clear before.  If 
 > you still have questions fell free to ask.
 > 
 > PS: Please fell free to forward this to others.
 > 
 > --- 
 > http://kevin.atkinson.dhs.org
 > 

----- End forwarded message -----

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