Fonts/Unicode
=============

The new libXg distribution supports Unicode.  Sam and 9term built
using the new UTF libXg will allow one to enter and edit files
containing Unicode characters encoded using UTF-8 (also known as
UTF-2 or UTF-FSS).  The software takes care of all this encoding.
Sam may be used to enter the files and when displayed in a suitable
9term window will be seen in all their Unicode glory.  The font bundle
is an integral part of this.  It contains bdf files of fonts which
are used to span various ranges of the Unicode space.

Most Unix program will still function oblivious to this change,
however some program will function less than perfectly.  Ls, for
example, will fail to line things up in columns if a multi-byte Rune
is present in a file name.  Anything which goes around stripping
high-bits from characters is likely to cause trouble.  Some seds
do this.  As do some mail programs (at various levels) and shells.
Your terminal setting should also be checked under 9term to ensure
they are not inhibiting transmission of the 8th bit.

I am currently using these headers on outgoing Unicode mail, however
I do not vouch for their correctness.  They do provide a bit of clue
as to what is going on 'though.

	Mime-Version: 1.0
	Content-Type: text/plain; charset=unicode-1-1-utf-8
	Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

I am working on a program to convert UTF-8 streams into reasonable
ascii aproximations where possible.  Bug me and I may actually get
it finished.

To use the full power of Unicode in your environment make sure
your fonts are set up correctly.  9term will accept a -p9font/-p9fn
arguments specifying a font file to use.  This font file specifies
which X fonts map to which ranges of the Unicode space.

PBM files
=========

The .pbm files in this directory are some snapshots of 9term in
action with various unicode characters on the screen.

Thanks
======

Thanks to Howard Trickey for first providing libXg to me and
Bob Flandrena for his feedback with the Unicode libXg and 9term.
Thanks also to Gary Capell, Anders Lindström, David Hogan, Byron
Rakitzis, Arnold Robbins, Chris Siebenmann, and Scott Schwartz for
their testing, feedback, and suggestions.  Thanks to Rob Pike for 8½
and to John Bovey at the University of Kent at Canterbury who wrote
xvt which provided an initial framework for 9term.  Thanks to Steve
Kilbane for the unicode.c implementation for suggesting the mark
functionality.  Thanks also to everyone who has provided valuable
feedback with regard to Makefiles and ports to various machines.

					Matty Farrow.
					matty@cs.usyd.edu.au
