Fri 31 Jul 2015 12:00:24 AM UTC, original submission:
At present, Windows (even XP SP3) is pretty thoroughgoing in its support of UTF-8.
General acceptance of UTF-8 (along with Windows' adoption of it) have come to the point where—on Windows—if an editor doesn't support UTF-8, it can be used there IMO only as a toy.
For the latest Win32 build, starting with option `--version' reveals its compile-time options disable UTF-8:
>nano --version
GNU nano, version 2.4.2
(C) 1999..2015 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Email: -unavailable- Web: http://www.nano-editor.org/
Compiled options: --disable-libmagic --disable-mouse --disable-utf8
Its README says, `This version of nano for Win32 systems was compiled using...cygwin and PDCurses 2.4.'
(Source: file `nano-2.4.2-win32/README.TXT' inside `nano-2.4.2.zip' from `http://www.nano-editor.org/dist/v2.4/NT/'.)
However, the compile-time options of Cygwin's latest version (of GNU nano) enable UTF-8:
>nano --version
GNU nano, version 2.4.1
Compiled options: --enable-utf8
BTW, I don't know whether `--enable-utf8' requires ncursesw, or can be done with PDCurses.
These files copied from the latest version of Cygwin (2.1.0-1) allow nano to work fine standalone (without the rest of Cygwin) on my Windows-XP SP3 and Windows-7 boxes—and then nano displays UTF-8 characters:
bin/cyggcc_s-1.dll
bin/cygiconv-2.dll
bin/cygintl-8.dll
bin/cygmagic-1.dll
bin/cygncursesw-10.dll
bin/cygwin1.dll
bin/cygz.dll
bin/nano.exe
lib/terminfo
usr/share/misc/magic
usr/share/misc/magic.mgc
usr/share/terminfo/63/cygwin
In particular, with Cygwin's latest build (of GNU nano), many double-byte UTF-8 characters display fine on Windows—such as:
U+00BB » c2 bb RIGHT-POINTING DOUBLE ANGLE QUOTATION MARK
And if it's started from the program ConsoleZ (rather than from cmd.exe), then many triple-byte UTF-8 characters also display fine—such as:
U+0904 ऄ e0 a4 84 DEVANAGARI LETTER SHORT A
It's true that users of Win32 interested in GNU nano might create their own builds, copy the Cygwin files as above, or even use Lubomir I. Ivanov's build (which includes a customized command console):
http://savannah.gnu.org/users/lubomir_ivanov
but most IMO would just try your official build, and then give up on GNU nano, because it lacks UTF-8 support.
Might you change this practice, and release an official Win32 build which enables UFT-8?
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