Re: MULE shows gibberish; now what?

[Ilya Zakharevich]

[A complimentary Cc of this posting was sent to
Kai
 =?iso-8859-15?q?Gro=DFjohann?=
<Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE>], who wrote in article 
<vafelbfw4cc.fsf@lucy.cs.uni-dortmund.de>:
> >> > So it does not show which codepoint inside the font is chosen!
> >> 
> >> You see "code point: 36", and you see that it is the right-hand part
> >> of the alphabet only.  So 128+36=164 is the actual code point you want.
> >
> > *I* do not want any *codepoint*.  What I want is that CYRILLIC CAPITAL R
> > is shown with a glyph which looks like `P', not like `A'.
> 
> You said it doesn't show which codepoint is used, I showed you that
> you can compute the codepoint from what it shows.  That's all.
> 
> I'm sorry if there was a misunderstanding.

Stop being so defensive, it was my fault.  I did not realize that MULE
is so primitive that it cannot use internationalization of fonts...

It can use only fonts "specifically crafted for Emacs purposes".  ;-)
[I never saw any *document* using iso...-5...]

> > How would I know?  Emacs case the info about the font, not me.  One
> > cannot deduce the encoding from the name, but one can do it from the
> > character properties table.
> 
> One cannot deduce the encoding from the name?  I thought the encoding
> was in the very end of the long-font-name-with-lotsa-dashes.

  xfontsel

Press on the second button from the right.  You will see a lot of
possible components for this slot.  About half of them are encoding
names.  The rest looks like as ad hoc gibberish.

> In my understanding, telling Emacs "use the foo font to display
> gb2312 encoded characters" amounts to pretty much the same thing as
> telling Emacs "the foo font is in gb2312 encoding".

Well, this is not enough.  A font in gb2312 encoding *has* cyrillic
glyphs.  Will Emacs use them if they are present?

> > *menuFont:      -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-18-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
> > Emacs*Font:     -misc-fixed-bold-*-*-*-*-140-75-75-*-*-*-1
> > Emacs*paneFont: -*-courier-bold-r-*-*-18-180-*-*-*-*-*-*
> > Emacs*selectionFont:    -*-courier-bold-r-*-*-16-180-*-*-*-*-*-*
> > Emacs.shell.menu.popup.font:    -*-courier-bold-r-*-*-18-180-*-*-*-*-*-*
> > Emacs.shell.pane.menubar.font:  -*-courier-bold-r-*-*-16-180-*-*-*-*-*-*
> 
> Okay, okay.  Hm.
> 
> But first things first.  Now you know which font Emacs used to display
> the Cyrillic.  Do you have any way of finding out the encoding
> of that font (with an X11 font editor, perhaps, or by running some
> other program)?

I can see the glyphs with xfd.  Spending some time I may be able to
identify the glyph table with an encoding.  But how will it help me?

> From the output of C-u C-x = you also know that Emacs thought the
> font was in iso-8859-5 encoding (because Emacs used that font for
> that charset).
> 
> I would like to verify at this point that the Cyrillic font is indeed
> in an encoding that is NOT iso-8859-5.  Could you please do that?

Maybe the next week...

> Now let's assume that the font is really in the "wrong" encoding (ie,
> not in iso-8859-5).  Now you need to tell Emacs to use a different
> font for iso-8859-5.  This works with fontsets.
> 
> I am ashamed to say that I've tried to read the documentation on
> fontsets and haven't been able to understand it.  But Emacs works
> well for me, even without fontsets, so I didn't spend more than 2 or
> 3 minutes on understanding it.
> 
> I'm sure that you can cook up a fontset specification that will tell
> Emacs to use a font that's right for iso-8859-5.

You seem pretty sure that there is such a font around.  Given that it
useless for "direct use" (it is not used outside the Emacs-like niche,
so it is usable only with software which will remap stuff for display).

Ilya