A Brief History of Non-English Fonts in X-talk

[J. Landman Gay]

On 10/30/13 3:05 PM, Mark Mitchell wrote:

> So, 23 years after Hypercard could do it all, 23 YEARS!! and 13 years
> after Revolution-Livecode could NOT do it… for the non-english font
> users, life still sucks, and sucks badly.
>
> If it was done so well in Hypercard… is it really that hard??

I had to laugh at your description, it was the best complaining I've 
ever read. :)

The difference between HyperCard and LiveCode is that Mac OS had unicode 
built into the OS, and all HC had to do was make some system calls to 
handle the text. LiveCode has, what? ten? operating systems to support, 
and it can't do that. It has to write the whole thing from scratch. So 
yeah, it really is that hard.

A few years ago I was complaining about unicode to Mark Waddingham and 
he threatened to make me read the whole 6,000 page unicode spec. Since 
then, he's done that.

Full support for unicode that "just works" (like HC did) is coming and 
if I remember right the rewrite is already in progress. It's part of the 
huge engine overhaul and involves recreating the field object. Once the 
new engine is done, you won't have to hold your nose any more or 
sacrifice any legs. Mark promised.

It really is a huge undertaking, but it's also part of the Kickstarter 
goals and it's getting done.

I wish everyone could complain the way you do though. It made me 
sympathetic, empathetic, and amused at the same time.

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com