[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#14731) Demographics report and localization

["Jason Short" <jdorje@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=14731 >

William Allen Simpson wrote:
> <URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=14731 >
> 
> Jason Short wrote:
> 
>>...  The problem is unfixable using conventional
>>means because it's a charsets problem.  The server puts the string into
>>a fixed-width 18-bytes buffer, which it then sends to the client.  The
>>problem, of course, if your string has multi-byte characters (as, in the
>>screenshot, you do) then these will take up some of the 18 bytes of the
>>buffer and the buffer will show wrongly sized because 18 bytes is not
>>the same as 18 characters.
> 
> Speaking as an Internet Engineer, that's HORRIBLE.  The kind of thing
> that should be fixed before any of the other enhancements that we've
> seen lately.  (And I want those enhancements.)

It's not as bad as all that.  This code has been around for 10 years 
(maybe) and nobody's noticed this problem until now.

-jason