22 Aug 2002 18:18:28 +0100, Alastair Reid
columns) of a given wide character (wchar_t) in the current locale. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Can you clarify whether this is because the mapping of wchar_ts onto Unicode code points depends on the locale or whether the width of a Unicode code point depends on the locale.
Both. But some people argue that this is evil and wcwidth should have a generally accepted standard meaning, as long as wchar_t is Unicode, because for terminal emulators etc. it must agree on remote systems in order to be useful. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/wcwidth.c
[I'm trying to understand whether we can be sure that the number of columns is portable so that different machines will apply the layout rule consistently (assuming the translation into UTF8 is consistent).]
In theory no. In practice maybe yes, provided that we use a fixed table instead of relying on system wcwidth. -- __("< Marcin Kowalczyk \__/ qrczak@knm.org.pl ^^ http://qrnik.knm.org.pl/~qrczak/