[sword-devel] Unicode enabled winsword

[Daniel Glassey]

On 28 Jan 2003 at 5:52, Steve Tang sent forth the message:

> > I've added an option in the preferences to change the 'User 
> > interface' font. That will change what font is used in comboboxes and 
> > text entry.
> 
> Please let this be an option, instead of having multiple binaries for
> different languages, if possible. 

That's what I sort of said this is for. Single binary to run on 
unicode-enabled winnt+ and on unicode-disabled win9x.

> Reasons if you're interested:
> * There are native speakers who prefer to not see any English at all
> * There are the immigrants like me who use English Windows (I get lost
> with Chinese translations of things like file, edit, etc.) Yet inside I
> think in Chinese, I recite my familiar verses in Chinese.
> * A lot of people still use Chinese Windows which is not compatible with
> unicode. Sword & its Chinese modules still work in that environment. But
> I've found that overseas Chinese are more likely to help out on utf-8
> things, while the home boys work with their out-dated environment,
> unfortunately.

Ok, if you mean 'separate the options for the language of the 
interface (menus and buttons etc) and the language of the biblebooks 
(anywhere they are displayed)' then that sounds like a good idea. 
Possibly for the next alpha.

Do you happen to know anyone that uses Chinese windows and if they 
could try to produce a sword locale (using whatever non-Unicode 
encoding that is used on Chinese Windows) that will display menus and 
booknames in Chinese for them?
If that does work with the released sword it will be important to 
keep it working in the more-unicode sword.

> > On Win9x the same exe can be used but any non-Latin script will be 
> > displayed as '????'. For non-English windows - sword locales can 
> > still be made for the appropriate codepage.
> 
> I used to have a win95 machine on which Sword worked fine.

Sorry, I should have made it clearer, the recent changes are for the 
user interface - menus, buttons, comboboxes and forms. The text 
controls can display unicode so non-Roman texts like Chinese do still 
display on win9x. The change is that if you have unicode-windows then 
you can have the option of more language interfaces rather than only 
latin scripts or only the scripts of the version of windows.

[see post on language names]
> 
> Does anyone know how to unicodize the personal module editor? That would
> be really helpful.

Hmmm, on winnt+ you can type in unicode ok, but when it saves it and 
displays the updated commentary it is back in ascii - yuck. Yep, that 
definitely need fixed. Hopefully it can be solved at the same time as 
the 'book name displayed in commentaries in ascii' problem.

Daniel