Re: IUTF8 pseudo-terminal mode

[Bill Sommerfeld <sommerfeld%sun.com@localhost>]

On Sat, 2005-12-31 at 11:05, Colin Watson wrote:
> Recent versions of the Linux kernel support an IUTF8 flag (see
> http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/unicode.html#mod) which allows the
> character-erase function in cooked mode to handle UTF-8 characters
> correctly. I would like to allow this mode to be preserved by SSH, but
> there is no assignment for it at present.
> 
> Could this line be added to the appropriate place in
> draft-ietf-secsh-connect and draft-ietf-secsh-assignednumbers to create
> this assignment? 42 seems like a reasonable place for it.
> 
>           42    IUTF8       Assume input characters are UTF-8 encoded.

as others have suggested, it's already too late to modify -connect and
-assignednumbers.

So what needs to happen to get this standardized is for someone to write
an internet-draft documenting this extension and advance it as either a
working group item or as an individual submission.

In response to later messages:
> While setting LANG et al is indeed useful, it's not enough to make the
> kernel's terminal driver do the right thing when erasing characters in
> cooked mode. That's why the termios flag was invented.

I think Nicolas was implying that a request from the client to use a
UTF8 locale would cause the server to set up the pseudoterminal it
creates/allocates/... appropriately for the requested locale.  But
that's perhaps at odds with the existing strategy within the protocol of
making termios-level details visible on the wire.

						- Bill