[BRLTTY] Multi-column characters (was: Re: 6.5 soon)

[Aura Kelloniemi]

Hi,

On 2022-01-28 at 11:27 -0500, Dave Mielke <Dave at mielke.cc> wrote:
 > [quoted lines by Aura Kelloniemi on 2022/01/28 at 16:30 +0200]
 > >The option would allow removing paddig space after all multi-column
 > >characters. This is necessary for people reading Asian text.

 > Actually, no. That change was actually specifically made for those who read Chinese. Having those kernel-inserted spaces wastes a lot of braille display space, makes the braille rather difficult to read, and prevents contractions from working. We "western" people tend to be a little arrogant, always tghinking that we know what's best for others.

Maybe you misunderstood my message. I want to make the current behaviour
configurable so that both the old and the new behaviour are available. I don't
want to make things more difficult to anybody (including people using Asian
languages and myself).

My point absolutely is not to tell anybody what is best for them. As can be
seen from my message, I totally understand the need of stripping away padding
spaces added by Linux – for people who read languages that utilize wide
characters.

There are (probably) many BRLTTY users who want to have their tables
well-aligned even in environments where there are wide characters. It does not
matter which group is a majority (Asian language readers or people interested
in table alignment). We don't need to choose which group to serve, because we
can easily serve both – by adding a configuration option.

Please also note, that not all wide characters are letters – many are emojis
and other symbols. These are the symbols that caused me misalignment
issues (before I patched BRLTTY and removed the space-stripping feature which
I do not need).

-- 
Aura