Problem with UTF-8 text in the Rcmdr package

-----Original Message-----
From: Prof Brian Ripley [mailto:ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk]
Sent: September-07-08 7:23 AM
To: John Fox
Cc: 'R-devel'; 'Jaro.Lajovic'
Subject: Re: [Rd] Problem with UTF-8 text in the Rcmdr package

The issue appears to be the Rcmdr output window and menus.  They are done
using Tcl/Tk, not by R.  So this might be a problem in Tcl/Tk or the fonts
it uses, or it might be problem with what Rcmdr passes to the tcltk
package.

We need the means to reproduce this (as per the posting guide):

cat("??????\n") 

cat("??\n") 

- what OSes are affected?  Does this occur in a UTF-8 locale on Linux, for
example?

- in what locales?

- what versions of Tcl/Tk?  Note that shipped with Windows R
changed between 2.5.1 and 2.7.x.

- Is this anything to do with translations?  I've not looked at how
translations are done in Rcmdr, but if gettext() is used, the string
passed to R for output is in the native encoding, so 'UTF-8 characters' is
incorrect.  It is possible that it is an iconv problem if the translations
are supplied in UTF-8 and not Latin-2.

There are far too many layers involved here to guess at what is going on.
My guess is that it ought to be possible to give a simple example of a
string which can be output to the Rcmdr console and will be rendered
incorrectly (together with a screen shot of how it is rendered).

I think the characters referred to are the Unicode glyphs 's and z with
caron', \u0161 and \u017E.  It seems that these will only be displayable
in Rcmdr on Windows in a Latin-2 locale, which I do not have set up on
Windows (but believe I could get installed).  However, examples using that
(and the menus) seem to be correct in both sl_SI.iso88592 and sl_SI.utf8
on Linux, which suggests that this is probably not an R issue but a Tcl/Tk
one.

On Fri, 5 Sep 2008, John Fox wrote:

Dear list members,

I've attached some email correspondence with Jaro Lajovic (with his
permission), detailing a problem with the Slovenian translation file for
the Rcmdr package.

Unfortunately, it is not 'detailed', and we do need the details.

In brief, while certain UTF-8 characters used in Slovenian used to
appear properly in older versions of R, some characters do not display
properly in the Rcmdr menus and output window under R 2.7.x. I've
confirmed the problem with the current version of the Rcmdr package
(1.4-0) and R 2.7.2 under Windows Vista.

I've checked the R docs and NEWS file for changes to R, but wasn't able
to turn up anything that seemed relevant. Frankly, however, my
understanding of how various character sets are handled is only partial.

Any help would be appreciated.

John

------------------------------
John Fox, Professor
Department of Sociology
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
web: socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox


-----Original Message-----
From: Jaro.Lajovic [mailto:Jaro.Lajovic at mf.uni-lj.si]
Sent: August-26-08 2:57 AM
To: John Fox
Subject: Re: Slovenian Rcmdr .po and .mo - and a problem

Dear John,

That seems to imply that there's a change in R rather than in the Rcmdr
that produced this problem. Do you notice the problem with any other
packages that use translation or with R itself?

As for other translated R packages, I am afraid I am not aware of any.
However, a quick test using cat with special characters:
cat "??????\n"
reveals that the string prints OK in the R (2.7.1.) console. The command
line also shows OK in the Rcmdr Script window, but does not display
right in the Output window. Special chars also fail in the Messages

Input (Script window) thus seems not to be affected, while the menu
system and output do not work properly.

Thank you very much,
Jaro

On Mon, 25 Aug 2008 21:54:43 +0200
 "Jaro.Lajovic" <Jaro.Lajovic at mf.uni-lj.si> wrote:

Dear John,

One question though: I assume from your message that the previous
version of the Rcmdr worked OK with R 2.7.1. Is that right?

No, the version 1.3-5 (that I still have with R 2.5.1) does not work
with R 2.7.1 either. So:

Rcmdr 1.3-5 with R 2.5.1: works OK.
Rcmdr 1.3-5 with R 2.7.1: does not work properly.
Rcmdr 1.4-0 with R 2.7.1: does not work properly.

Thank you in advance,
Jaro

On Mon, 25 Aug 2008 18:52:32 +0200
 "Jaro.Lajovic" <Jaro.Lajovic at mf.uni-lj.si> wrote:

Dear John,

Please find attached zipped Slovenian versions of .po (plain text

and

UTF-8 coded text) and .mo files.

However, there seems to be a problem I have not been able to

resolve.

While special characters display properly under R version 2.5.1

with

Rcmdr 1.3-5, they fail to display (= are substituted by black

blocks)

under R version 2.7.1 with the new Rcmdr 1.4-0. By the way: the

.mo

file of the ver. 1.3-5 copied to 1.4-0 also failed to display
properly.

(An additional detail: three special characters that are used in

the

Slo version are c, s and z with hacek. c with hacek is not

affected,

it is just s and z with hacek that are not displayed OK.)

Your advice will be much appreciated.

With best regards,
Jaro

--------------------------------
John Fox, Professor
Department of Sociology
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox/

--
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595