[bug-notifications] [ncurses 0003457]: Ncurses lacks wide character support

[Mantis Bug Tracker]

The following issue has been ASSIGNED. 
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http://www.opencsw.org/mantis/view.php?id=3457 
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Reported By:                skayser
Assigned To:                dam
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Project:                    ncurses
Issue ID:                   3457
Category:                   other
Reproducibility:            have not tried
Severity:                   feature
Priority:                   normal
Status:                     assigned
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Date Submitted:             2009-03-05 23:01 CET
Last Modified:              2009-03-26 15:51 CET
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Summary:                    Ncurses lacks wide character support
Description: 
Just wanted to build nano 2.0.9 against ncurses and using mGARv2

  ./configure $(DIRPATHS) --enable-all 

complains:

configure: WARNING:
*** Insufficient UTF-8 support was detected in your curses and/or C
*** libraries.  If you want UTF-8 support, please verify that your slang
*** was built with UTF-8 support or your curses was built with wide
*** character support, and that your C library was built with wide
*** character support.

>From having a look at the ncurses README --enable-widec does seem to
contain some caveats. Filing this as a feature request.
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 (0005684) skayser (administrator) - 2009-03-20 17:42
 http://www.opencsw.org/mantis/view.php?id=3457#c5684 
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I am just trying to build mcabber, which also complains about missing UTF-8
support in ncurses. What's worse this time is that mcabber then uses VT100
line drawing characters (via ncurses) to draw its TUI and this doesn't work
with a UTF-8 CSWxterm (and i suppose neither with any other UTF-8 terminal
emulator). The vertical lines are shifted, sometimes they don't display at
all and words are not correctly wrapped on the right hand side of the
terminal.

I can work around this by either setting NCURSES_NO_UTF8_ACS=1 when
calling mcabber or using xterm in non UTF-8 mode, but IMHO it could be more
straight-forward when we would have UTF-8 support in ncurses.

I had a look at the ncurses README again: --enable-widec produces a
separate set of libs with a "w" suffix. Those are _not_ compatible with the
regular ncurses libs, but because of the "w" suffix they don't clash, so i
think it should be safe to build an additional wide ncurses version without
breaking existing stuff. Debian does it this way, they have libncurses5 and
libncursesw5. 

Issue History 
Date Modified    Username       Field                    Change               
====================================================================== 
2009-03-05 23:01 skayser        New Issue                                    
2009-03-20 17:42 skayser        Note Added: 0005684                          
2009-03-26 15:51 dam            Status                   new => assigned     
2009-03-26 15:51 dam            Assigned To               => dam             
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