Antialiased Nedit, UTF8 now a possibility

[Dušan Peterc]

Hello Thomas,

On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 10:44 AM, Thomas Orgis <thomas-forum at orgis.org>wrote:

> Problem is that the text widget is rather at the core of a text editor...
> 10% is definitely not enough.


Without some programmer's optimism, it is hard to accomplish anything ;-)
All OpenMotif widgets were reworked for XFT (antialiased fonts) and UTF8
support, and I do not think more that 20% of code has been modified. But I
do not say it is a small task.

> Actually, some UTF8 <-> isoXXXX encoding is probably necessary in such an
> > editor, just like kwrite has it.
>
> The conversion itself is not the big isssue when you have iconv()
> available...

iconv library is available on all Linux systems, and it is also open source
in the way you like it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iconv


> > handled now, where UTF8 would be the inner display mode, and various
> input
>
> That's the core point: You need to work UTF (or, rather wide characters of
> 16 or 32 bit) into nedit, with all the funny unicode aspects like greatly
> enlarged character classes. Nedit does not just need to display the text,
> it needs to work it.


The way I understand it, the advantage of UTF8 is that you can still use all
the same string functions, as your character data is still allocated at byte
level, sub<128 characters are still just one byte long, only the "funny"
characters are longer. So the change is much smaller than if you need to
convert to 16 bit or 32 bit characters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8


> I agree to Unicode support, but I rather prefer a clean fixed width bitmap
> font for program text (like the misc-fixed unicode font I use in my
> terminal).
> I see anti-aliasing being more important when you deal with layout that has
> more to do with typesetting ... like, I cannot bear looking at PDF text
> documents without anti-aliasing on a computer screen.


Agreed about antialiasing, but UTF8 is becoming a necessity even in normal
text editing, even for filenames.
Anyway, the fixed non AA text rendering would still be available.

Actually, I dropped OpenMotif because my platform is too _new_! OpenMotif
> wants
> the Xprint library, which is not included anymore with current Xorg
> versions.
> It's a showstopper for now...


I use OpenMotif on new platforms (OpenSUSE 10.3 and 11.1), and I do not have
problems with Xprint library.
I download it from CVS, type
./autogen.sh
make
make install
and my resulting motif programs do not link against Xprint

If your platform is somewhat different, then I guess you can disable Xprint
in
config/cf/X11.tmpl
or using the parameter BuildXprint to the autogen.sh


> and then, there's the other point that prevented me
> from doing much work for making it work again:
> OpenMotif is not free software. See
>
> http://www.marutan.net/cde/
>

CDE is not (Open)Motif, I think at this time CDE is largely irrelevant (but
I did sign the petition at the time).

I much prefer writing code to license wars.
I don't like OpenMotif license. But to say that it is not open source is an
exaggeration, no matter who says it.
You have the source, you can make the changes, and the process of
posting/accepting fixes is open.
http://openmotif.cvs.sourceforge.net/openmotif/
http://www.motifzone.net/
http://bugs.motifzone.net/show_bug.cgi
http://openmotif.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/openmotif/openmotif/lib/Xm/?sortby=date#dirlist

OpenMotif's license is an open license with strings attached - you can not
use it on operating systems whose kernel is not open source.
But GPL also puts claims on your code, it asks you to release your other
source against which you link, as GPL.
To me, GPL is more limiting than OpenMotif license.
So I would not disqualify OpenMotif based use or development based solely on
the license.

Lesstiff, the blessed open alternative, does not see a lot of development
lately
http://lesstif.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/lesstif/lesstif/lib/Xm/?sortby=date#dirlist
(contrat that to OpenMotif above).

That is where nedit needs work: Inside the application (editor core and text
> widget).
> So if you want to step in, I can imagine people welcoming this;-)


I am willing to contribute, under guidance of someone with more expertise in
Motif's inner works.

Thanks for your feedback.

Dušan Peterc