[Cuis-dev] Diacritical marks in Smalltalk code

[Juan Vuletich]

Hi Boris,

On 12/20/2022 9:42 AM, Boris Shingarov via Cuis-dev wrote:
> What is the preferred way to debug what happens when a keyboard key is 
> pressed?  I am observing some strange non-orthogonality in the latest 
> Cuis: some Greek letters appear to be "more equal" than others.

Try `Sensor kbdTest` and `Sensor test`. Have the Transcript visible. 
Both end with [x]. Hack them as needed.

>
> Let me explain.
>
> I use Unicode for mathematical notation heavily in various systems 
> which all differ how this Unicode is keyed in.  They all revolve 
> around the same idea of LaTeX-like conventions, but from LiquidHaskell 
> to ProofGeneral to Coqtail to whatever-I-tried-in-Smalltalk there is 
> enough difference in the details to ruin the muscle-memory 
> experience.  So I gave up on all application-specific schemes and have 
> set up an xkbd layout which, while again being similar to all of the 
> above, behaves consistently because it's an OS-level "input method".  
> (It's an ".XCompose" script for X11).

Cool.

> So for Greek letters it just sends Unicode Greek to Cuis.  This works 
> well with *almost* all Greek letters, but *some*, such as θ, seem to 
> somehow not result in any input. 

The above could be of help.

> I remember Juan was showing me some magic where some codepoints were 
> translated into a "special Cuis codepage", is this something that 
> still happens?

That was in the old days. Now Cuis is fully Unicode capable, and strings 
are actually instances of UnicodeString that holds UTF-8 bytes.

> the transition to full Unicode would remove all that complexity, 
> right?  what's the best way to step through what happens to a key 
> event in the Debugger in Cuis?
>

There still be some problem, though. Cuis is fully Unicode capable, but 
the keyboard input is taken from whatever the VM delivers to us. `Sensor 
test` will show what the VM is delivering us. Most likely we'll need to 
understand how that relates to the input you're sending with your 
XCompose script, and how to make sense of it.

HTH,

-- 
Juan Vuletich
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