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From: "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Why UTF-8 (was Re: Lower bounds of Strings)
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 2021 19:08:11 +0100
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On 2021-01-09 15:52, Jeffrey R. Carter wrote:
> On 1/9/21 3:31 AM, Randy Brukardt wrote:
>> The default String should be UTF-8, the others should be reserved for
>> special cases (interfacing in particular). You don't want the default 
>> string
>> type to restrict the contents, and you don't want it to waste a lot of
>> space.
> 
> I don't understand this. I presume there was a time when the extra 
> complexity of UTF-8 was a reasonable price to pay for the larger than 
> 1-byte character range it provided, and there may be systems where it 
> still makes sense, but with most systems these days having GB of memory 
> and TB of storage, the simplicity of using 2 bytes per character seems 
> worth the wasted space. On my 4-yr-old computer I could do everything 
> with 4-byte characters and not have a problem.

Because there is no complexity in UTF-8. String characters are always 
accessed consequently. So UCS-4 has no advantage over UTF-8.

As for interfaces any string has always two: presentation array 
interface (encoding) and character array interface (view). The language 
should better support proper abstractions and then having whatever 
encoding will be no problem.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de