Re: GNAT vs UTF-8 source file names

["J-P. Rosen" <rosen@adalog.fr>]

Le 06/07/2017 à 17:18, Shark8 a écrit :
> I'm not saying it isn't complicated; I'm saying that it could, and
> should, have been done better.
I'm willing to accept these kinds of statement only from people who
participated in the design...

> Instead we get a bizarre
> Frankenstein's-monster of techniques where some character-glyphs are
> precomposed (with duplicates across multiple languages) and
> Zalgo-script is a thing. (see: https://eeemo.net/ )
Yes, representation of characters is not unique. It's a compromise
between compacity, compatibility, exhaustivity...

> Not only that, but there's the problem of strings; instead of doing
> something sensible ("but wasteful"*) by designing a "multilanguage
> string" that partitioned strings by language. Ex:
This is total confusion. Unicode is about coded sets and encodings, it
has nothing to do with languages and internationalization.

>> The unifying principle is the normalization forms. The fact that
>> there are several normalization forms comes from the difference
>> between human and computer needs.
> 
> Perhaps so, but there ought to be a way to identify such a context
> rather than just throwing these normalized forms in the UTF-string
> blender, shrugging, and handing it off to the programmers as "not my
> problem".
Another confusion: normalization forms have nothing to do with encodings
(UTF or not). Normalization provides a unique representation of
composite characters that may be represented in several ways.

> I mean as a counter-example ASN.1 has normalizing encodings like DER
> and CER, but these are (a) usually distinguished by being defined by
> their particular encoding, and when they aren't (b) are proper
> subsets of BER. [Much like subtypes in Ada and how we can use Natural
> & Positive for better describing our problem, but can use Integer
> when needed (ie foreign interfacing where the constraint might not be
> guarenteed).]
I don't follow you here. ASN.1 is a representation of structured data,
and AFAIU does not specify which coded set is used.


-- 
J-P. Rosen
Adalog
2 rue du Docteur Lombard, 92441 Issy-les-Moulineaux CEDEX
Tel: +33 1 45 29 21 52, Fax: +33 1 45 29 25 00
http://www.adalog.fr