From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,bcb6f63419c2a56b X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public Path: controlnews3.google.com!news2.google.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!feed.news.tiscali.de!newsfeed.stueberl.de!proxad.net!news.tiscali.fr!foorum!not-for-mail From: Ludovic Brenta Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Supporting full Unicode Date: 12 May 2004 10:57:25 GMT Message-ID: <2004512-125725-433248@foorum.com> References: <9j8oc.16324$V97.13312@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net> <2004512-94456-948110@foorum.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 212.190.145.10 NNTP-Posting-Date: 12 May 2004 10:57:25 GMT X-Complaints-To: abuse@foorum.fr X-POSTER: foorum.com X-Foorum_user_id: X-Foorum_user_tmp_id: 200454-93313-705548-212.190.145.10-foorum X-Originating-User: 212.190.145.10 X-Newsreader: Foorum Xref: controlnews3.google.com comp.lang.ada:476 Date: 2004-05-12T10:57:25+00:00 List-Id: Bjorn Persson wrote: > David Starner wrote: >> they should have defined Wide_Character to be UTF-16 like Java did. > > Keeping in mind that in UTF-16 some characters take two bytes and > others take four, how do you propose to define that type? It is true that variable-width encodings such as UTF-16 or UTF-8 are more difficult to handle than fixed-width encodings like UCS-2 or UCS-4. Basically, if you want to do advanced processing of character data, you may find it easier to first transcode it to UCS-4 (i.e. Wide_Wide_Character, 32 bits wide). But UTF-8 is gaining momemtum. Originally intended as an external encoding only, it is now in use as an internal encoding, too. I suppose that it turned out that processing UTF-8 directly is not that difficult after all. This is especially true if all you want to do is localisation of software using gettext; in this case, you can use UTF-8 as both your internal and external encoding without any trouble. The Perl regular expression engine, for example, supports UTF-8 strings directly. I don't know if it transcodes to UTF-4 internally. -- Ludovic Brenta. -- Use our news server 'news.foorum.com' from anywhere. More details at: http://nnrpinfo.go.foorum.com/