Re: Latin_1 and portability

["Björn Persson" <bjorn_persson.spam-is-evil@sverige.nu>]

On Sat, 13 Dec 2003 15:24:56 -0000
"amado.alves" <amado.alves@netcabo.pt> wrote:

> >> Of course AdaOS will do the right thing :-)
> 
> >Now I'm curious. What is the right thing to do?
> 
> Hmm... good point :-) 24-bit Unicode everywhere inside the system, and
> absolutely flawless converters to/from all formats?

Imagine a file server running on AdaOS in a heterogenous network. Let's say
files are served with SMB (Microsoft's protocol), so that both Windows, Mac
and Unix clients can connect. I don't think SMB lets the server ask the
clients what operating system they are running, and I'd be very surprised
if it has a method of specifying whether a file is text or not. Even if SMB
can do that, the client operating systems usually won't know what kind of
data is in the files that various programs produce, so they can't tell the
server.

As a result, the file server can't know which files should be converted, it
can't know which format to expect from a certain client, and it can't know
which format a certain client needs; and there's not much AdaOS can do to
help.

Björn Persson