[source: http://www.vlist.eu/downloads/fidonews/myarticles/goldutf1.art] The F I D O N E W S Volume 37, Number 17 27 Apr 2020 http://ambrosia60.dd-dns.de/archiv/pub/fidohist/fidonews/2020/fido3717.nws *Training Golded to play UTF-8 Part 1 Training Golded to play UTF-8 Part 1 By Michiel van der Vlist, 2:280/5555 Golded has limited support for reading and writing messages in UTF-8. There are two ways. One is using an external editor. The other way is to use translation tables. As ever so often both methods have pros and cons. Using an external editor. ========================= Golded has an option to use an external editor. Unfortunately this can only be invoked when writing a message. So to just read a message in utf-8 one has to "answer" it and when ready not save it. Make a file gold8.cfg that is a copy of your golded.cfg with the following statements: (replacing any with lines with the same keywords.) EDITOR @file EDITORFILE GOLDED.MSG XLATPATH d:\fido\golded\ XLATIMPORT UTF-8 XLATLOCALSET UTF-8 XLATEXPORT UTF-8 XLATCHARSET UTF-8 UTF-8 UTF_UTF.CHS where is the UTF-8 capable editor of your choice. I use the Windows version of Vi. An alternative for Windows is Notepad. For Linux there is nano. Almost any UTF-8 editor will do and there is plenty of choice. UTF_UTF.CHS is a dummy translation table who's main purpose it to get the '4' into the "CHRS: UTF-8 4" kludge line of the message. You may have this file already. If not get it from my system by file request or download http://www.vlist.eu/downloads/utf8_850.chs Start golded with "golded -cgold8.cfg" or make a .bat file to that effect. When answering or creating a message select "External Editor" and there you go... To be continued... [source: http://www.vlist.eu/downloads/fidonews/myarticles/goldutf2.art] The F I D O N E W S Volume 37, Number 18 04 May 2020 http://ambrosia60.dd-dns.de/archiv/pub/fidohist/fidonews/2020/fido3718.nws *Training Golded to play UTF-8 Part 2 Training Golded to play UTF-8 Part 2 By Michiel van der Vlist, 2:280/5555 Golded has limited support for reading and writing messages in UTF-8. There are two ways. One is using an external editor. The other way is to use translation tables. Last week was about the first method. This week is about using translation tables. Using translation tables. ========================= Golded uses 8 bit translation tables to convert one character set into another. Oddly enough Golded ignores the current code page setting and always uses the code page in effect when the system is booted up. At least that is how it works in Windows. Linux or OS/2 may be different. So if the systems boots up in CP850 all you will ever see in the Golded screen are the characters in the CP850 set. The character encoding scheme in the messages can be different, but the gliphs are limited to those in the CP850 set. Add this to your golded.cfg XLATCHARSET CP850 UTF-8 850_UTF8.CHS XLATCHARSET UTF-8 CP850 UTF8_850.CHS GROUP UTF8 xlatimport utf-8 member utf-8 xlatexport utf-8 origin UTF-8 enthousiast ENDGROUP If you do not already have 850_UTF8.CHS and UTF8_850.CHS you can get them from my system by file request or http://www.vlist.eu/downloads/ Oddly enough the Golded translation mechanism allows for translating one byte into one or more bytes but not the other wat around. As a result all characaters in CP850 can be corectly translated into UTF-8 but the translation fom UTF-8 into CP850 is very, very limited. Actually it only works for characters in the range u+00C0 - u+00FF. This covers the accents and umlauts but not much more. If your system's native character set is not CP850 you will need translation tables to and from that character set. The pros and cons of both methods. ================================== External editor Translation tables Pros Support for any unicode character Easy installation. that the external editor and the Editing and formatting text underlying OS support. works as one is used to. Cons External editors normally only The set of usable characters is support entering text "lines" limited to those in the codepage separated by a line seperator. installed at startup of the sys- Fidonet text consists of "para- tem. (CP850 for Western Europe). graphs" seperated by a CR. The Incoming non ASCII limited to two methods do not mix well. u+00C0 - u+00FF.