Re: [Chicken-users] UTF-8 support in eggs

[Alex Shinn]

Hi,

On Tue, Jul 8, 2014 at 5:58 AM, Mario Domenech Goulart <address@hidden> wrote:

Hi,

I want to use some eggs and I need them to handle UTF-8.  By "handle
UTF-8" I mean "treat strings as UTF-8", so that

   (string (string-ref "ç" 0)) => "ç"

for example.

CHICKEN's string-related procedures "accept" UTF-8 strings, but it
doesn't mean they will correctly handle them.

It also doesn't necessarily mean they will mishandle them.

It might help the discussion if we had a list of eggs which

are known to break on UTF-8 inputs.

I need UTF-8 support in some eggs that currently don't handle UTF-8.
Assuming we won't have proper UTF-8 support in the core anytime soon,
what's the best way to approach this?  Here are some options I thought
(I must tell in advance none sounds good to me):

1. Have <egg> and <egg>-utf8 variants.  Or, more generally, <egg> and
   <egg>-<encoding> variants.  That would turn our coop into a disgusting
   mess and would be a nightmare to egg authors.

2. Make eggs install <egg> and <egg>-<encoding> modules.  So, you can
   (use <egg>) or (use <egg>-<encoding>) depending on your needs.

3. Manually forking and patching eggs on the user end.

4. Make affected eggs functors on the set of basic string operations.

The same approaches also apply to eggs needing the full

numeric tower, though with UTF-8 there's less chance of

breakage when mixing eggs which do and don't use the utf8 egg.

-- 

Alex