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ilembitov

Member

Registered: 2008-10-07

Posts: 124

Need help with patching an app

OK, here I am. I used to read K&R a while ago, however I gave up my efforts to start actual coding: I believed I needed some actual practical tasks to do that and I couldn't find any (that I could do). And now I got one.
Here is a really nice app called sc. It's a ncurses spreadsheet calculator written in C, with all the necessary functions and VI-like bindings. Really good and I can't really find any alternative. The only thing is that it wasn't updated since 2002 and thus, it doesn't have support for UTF-8, which means, it can't display Russian.
I don't see anybody interested in this app anymore, so I guess, the only way to solve that issue is to do that myself. Which brings a question: how do I do that?
I mean, OK, I can reread K&R, but that's just language reference/tutorial. To solve this problem I need to be able to understand and correctly read a UNIX C program that consists of several files, relies on system libraries and ncurses. Besides, I should understand the approaches to implementing UTF-8 in C apps. So what I ask you guys is a straightforward, step-by-step solution. I don't need you to patch the app itself. I just need an advice on what should I read to do the job (to deal with UTF and to be able to adequately read the code) and how should I actually do it (may be it would be nice if someone could point me to an example of a similar task already solved). So, it's just that - would do I need to know and how do I learn that.

Here is the source code:
ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/fi … .16.tar.gz

Sorry if all this sounds strange. I just want to solve this issue and I believe that may be that could be my way into actual hacking (of course, not software engineering).

HashBox

Member

Registered: 2009-01-22

Posts: 271

Re: Need help with patching an app

Hi there, unfortunately I'm unable to help you directly, but after a bit of searching I've come across this page http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/unicode.html#mod which I think should give you some pointers.
Hope that helps a little