On Tue, Oct 10, 2023 at 10:03:46PM +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote: > > From: Gavin Smith <gavinsmith0...@gmail.com> > > Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2023 18:09:15 +0100 > > Cc: Eli Zaretskii <e...@gnu.org>, bug-texinfo@gnu.org > > > > On Mon, Oct 09, 2023 at 11:32:49PM +0200, Bruno Haible wrote: > > > Gavin Smith wrote: > > > > It is supposed to attempt to force the locale to a UTF-8 locale. You > > > > can see the code in xspara_init that attempts to change the locale. > > > > There > > > > is also a comment before xspara_add_text: > > > > > > > > "This function relies on there being a UTF-8 locale in LC_CTYPE for > > > > mbrtowc to work correctly." > > > > > > That's an inherently unportable thing. You can't just force an UTF-8 > > > locale if the system does not have it. > > > > The module shouldn't load if it can't switch to a UTF-8 locale. xspara_init > > returns a different value if these attempts fail leading the code loading > > the module (in Texinfo::XSLoader) to fall back to the pure Perl version. > > If the inability to load the UTF-8 locale means the modules cannot be > loaded, I consider that a serious problem, because Perl implementation > is slower. We need every possible way of speeding up texi2any, > because the speed regression since Texinfo moved to the Perl > implementation is significant, so much so that some refuse to upgrade > from Texinfo 4.13 (and thus hold back usage of new Texinfo features in > the various GNU manuals). We cannot afford losing speedups due to > such issues, especially since they are solvable using readily > available libraries.
It worked before as far as I knew in previous releases (you wrote some of the code for it) and I don't think anything has fundamentally changed. There shouldn't be any loss of functionality on what has existed in previous releases. I was not proposing turning off the XS modules in case a UTF-8 locale wasn't found. I appreciate that MinGW support is a special case and things can work differently there. > > It would be good to get away from the attempts to switch to a UTF-8 locale > > but I doubt it is urgent to do before the release, as the current approach, > > however flawed, has been in place and worked fairly well for a long time > > (since the XS paragraph module was written). At the time it seemed to be > > the only way to get the information from wcwidth. > > Then what do you propose to do about this in the MinGW port of Texinfo > 7.1? And why is it urgent to release Texinfo 7.1 without fixing this > issue? See my other message.
