From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 20791 invoked by alias); 4 Nov 2004 05:52:47 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gdb-help@sources.redhat.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: gdb-owner@sources.redhat.com Received: (qmail 20783 invoked from network); 4 Nov 2004 05:52:45 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO sccrmhc13.comcast.net) (204.127.202.64) by sourceware.org with SMTP; 4 Nov 2004 05:52:45 -0000 Received: from [10.0.1.2] (h000393256f12.ne.client2.attbi.com[24.61.199.96]) by comcast.net (sccrmhc13) with SMTP id <200411040552450160027su4e> (Authid: schlie); Thu, 4 Nov 2004 05:52:45 +0000 User-Agent: Microsoft-Entourage/11.1.0.040913 Date: Thu, 04 Nov 2004 05:52:00 -0000 Subject: Re: GDB 6.4 and translations From: Paul Schlie To: Eli Zaretskii CC: Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <01c4c229$Blat.v2.2.2$72d18d40@zahav.net.il> Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit X-SW-Source: 2004-11/txt/msg00033.txt.bz2 > From: Eli Zaretskii > >> Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 19:27:19 -0500 >> From: Paul Schlie >> >> Although I don't know if it's been considered or even an issue, but it may >> be worth trying to avoid the use of Unicode's typographical quote characters >> in otherwise ASCII message string output on even Unicode supported platforms >> by default > > Sorry, I have no idea what you are talking about; please consider > elaborating, e.g., by providing an example of such a problematic > message. > > AFAIK, we don't use any non-ASCII characters in the GDB message text. > If you know about any use of such characters in GDB, please point out > where in the code we have them, since I believe that must be some bug. > > As for the translated messages, it's entirely up to the translators' > teams to decide how they encode the text in their language. If they > decide to use UTF-8 or some other Unicode encoding (and use Unicode > quoting characters), there's no way we could prevent them from doing > so. Nor do I think we should: the translators know better than we do > what characters are supported by end-user platforms in their locale. > >> especially for text which may likely be subsequently parsed by tools likely >> benefiting, and/or depending on the use of plain old ASCII quote characters. > > If you are talking about GDB GUI front ends, they should invoke GDB > after setting the Posix locale anyway, since they want the messages in > English to be able to parse them. THus, if the original messages we > have in the code are in plain ASCII, the front ends will not have any > problems here. > > Or did I miss something? No, I don't think you're missing anything. I was simply speculating, being ignorant of GDB's longer term internationalization plans, that it may be wise to try to avoid the potential complications associated with the default use of Unicode left/right quote character codes as tentatively chosen to be used in GCC 4.0 quoted output message text on unicode supported platforms; as although it may seem aesthetically pleasant, it's likely to create otherwise unnecessary complications in circumstances where interface, status, warning, and/or error messages may be parsed by subsequent tools which may not be unicode aware. Where given your statements, it doesn't seem to be part of GDB's present plans, which I suspect is good; but still suspect that any translated message text containing ASCII symbols which are anticipated to be potentially utilized by other programs for whatever purpose, should likely retain the original ASCII symbol codes in the text were possible by default (even on Unicode platforms) to prevent potential subsequent complications, if there's a choice in the matter.