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=0.7 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,MSGID_RANDY autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,6d9eb594a33cb947 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-01-30 22:24:03 PST Path: supernews.google.com!sn-xit-03!supernews.com!news-feed.riddles.org.uk!newsfeed.direct.ca!look.ca!newsfeed.mathworks.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!nntp2.deja.com!nnrp1.deja.com!not-for-mail From: Robert Dewar Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: very specific question on Ada syntax Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 06:10:10 GMT Organization: Deja.com Message-ID: <958a81$kt3$1@nnrp1.deja.com> References: <94s4vm$qr4$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <87bssu2h6w.fsf@deneb.enyo.de> <94vp38$ldv$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <8766ixe89y.fsf@deneb.enyo.de> <9571hp$ghg$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <877l3ck7nb.fsf@deneb.enyo.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: 205.232.38.14 X-Article-Creation-Date: Wed Jan 31 06:10:10 2001 GMT X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.61 [en] (OS/2; U) X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x54.deja.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 205.232.38.14 X-MyDeja-Info: XMYDJUIDrobert_dewar Xref: supernews.google.com comp.lang.ada:4739 Date: 2001-01-31T06:10:10+00:00 List-Id: In article <877l3ck7nb.fsf@deneb.enyo.de>, Florian Weimer wrote: > Robert Dewar writes: > > > Yes, you can imagine a world in which 16 bit characters are > > used uniformly, but that world is not today's world (I am > > talking about common usage in Japan, Korea and China -- all > > of which tend to use different representation methods, all > > common ones of which are supported by GNAT. > > BTW, Unicode is now a 21.something bit character set, and the > Wide_Character type is no longer appropriate for representing Unicode > (UCS-4) characters. Will Ada be adapted accordingly? I think in practice that the 16-bit subset of Unicode, the BMP page of 10646, will be much more widely used in practice than the full 21-bit set, and it was a quite deliberate decision in the design of Ada to restrict Wide_Chararacter to the BMP. Of course there is certainly nothing to stop the addition of a Wide_Wide_Character type to the language, and at the very least it would be worth an ARG ruling permitting this usage. Actually our experience is that very few people are even using the BMP in most Ada applications. There was certainly a requirement to support it in Ada 95 (it in fact was a deal that had been made in passing the ISO Ada 85 standard, where it was noted that the standard was deficient with respect to character set support, and it was agred that this would be addressed in the next revision of the language). Of course if Ada gets used more in international commerce, perhaps making use of the IS annex, then the provision of Wide_Character is important. So far, the most significant program I know of using Wide_Character and Wide_String is the ASIS definition itself, where it is used to represent source texts. Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/