rws@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU (04/27/89)
An MIT X Consortium draft standard of the Compound Text Encoding is now available for Public Review. This draft standard defines an interchange format for multiple character set data, such as multi-lingual text, and is to be used in selections, window properties, and resources. The format is based on ISO standards for encoding and combining character sets. Library routines to deal with manipulating this format will be provided by the X Consortium in the future. The Compound Text Encoding is just one part of the total environment required to deal with multiple character sets, and to deal with single character sets that are dynamically specified. Applications will usually require facilities such as: 1. character type information - determining which characters in a character set are alphabetic, numeric, punctuation, etc. 2. string handling - equivalents to strcat, strcmp, etc. 3. collation - rules definining collation order 4. input translation - turning sequences from an input alphabet into characters in an output syllabary. One example of software providing these facilities is the Character Set Manager from Apollo Computer, recently placed on expo.lcs.mit.edu for anonymous ftp. The objective of Public Review is to determine if the current draft is acceptable as a Consortium standard. Public Review can result in changes to the draft standard. Public Review of the Compound Text Encoding is scheduled to end August 4. The X community is encouraged to review the draft and submit comments by electronic mail to compound-text@expo.lcs.mit.edu Comments sent to other addresses are not guaranteed to be considered. Commentors should take the review process seriously, and should: 1. Identify objectionable wording in the document. 2. Suggest specific alternative wording. and most importantly: 3. Provide a rationale for the suggested change. Commentors should also carefully distinguish between: 1. Problems that they regard as intolerable and that must be corrected before the document becomes a standard. 2. Aspects that they don't like but could live with for a few years until a future revision of the standard. 3. Additional functionality that they can live without in an initial standard but would like to see in a future revision. A Consortium committee will review the comments and respond to commentors. The following documents are available via anonymous ftp to expo.lcs.mit.edu in the directory /pub/CTEXT/ ctext.tbl.ms Compound Text (troff source) ctext.ps Compound Text in PostScript The documents are also available via the archive server at xstuff@expo.lcs.mit.edu. The following items are available, by sending a message with the Subject: line of "send etc <itemname>" and an empty message body: ctext.tbl.ms Compound Text (troff source) ctext.ps Compound Text in PostScript For example, use "send etc ctext.tbl.ms" to retrieve the troff source. Some mailers produce mail headers that are unusable for extracting return addresses. If you use such a mailer, you won't get any response. If you happen to know an explicit path, you can include a line like path foo%bar.bitnet@mitvma.mit.edu or path bar!foo!frotz in the body of your message, and the daemon will use it. If you simply cannot obtain the Compound Text Encoding from the network, you may request a paper copy by writing to: Michelle Leger Laboratory for Computer Science 545 Technology Square Cambridge, MA 02139