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Re: [Gnu-arch-users] [OT] Unicode vs. legacy character sets
From: |
Stephen J. Turnbull |
Subject: |
Re: [Gnu-arch-users] [OT] Unicode vs. legacy character sets |
Date: |
Sat, 06 Mar 2004 16:00:01 +0900 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.1006 (Gnus v5.10.6) XEmacs/21.5 (celeriac, linux) |
(I'm way behind on my reading; if this is missing important context
from other posts, my apologies---the post I'm replying to accidently
got copied to an urgent folder, so I read it even though I knew it
wasn't dayjob-related. ;-)
First things first.
Tom> Mostly, the plan is to wind up with attributed text as one of
Tom> the fundamental string types.
I doubt you'll like the implementation of
http://www.m17n.org/m17n-lib/, but that's exactly what they do.
Might be worth mimicking their API where it makes sense. (Or not,
depending on your design goals.)
Tom> Indeed -- make a hostile fork but get enough people behind
Tom> and then, boom, that's the new standard. I don't think it
Tom> would work but if the dissenters have a compelling point,
Tom> than it will.
Here there are no "hostile" forks; forking Unicode is more aptly
characterized as "terrorism,"[1] undermining the whole social
framework to achieve tactical goals. (IMHO YMMV, but I really feel
that strongly about this particular standard, even though in many ways
I think the standard itself sucks in details.)
Tom> The primary point being that it makes little difference to
Tom> anything that's in or planned for hackerlab and Pika anytime
Tom> soon -- swap out some consortium data files for other data
Tom> files and there you go.
But think about it---you'll need a standard to tell you which files
you're using. ISO 2022 (aka "modal encodings"), here we come.
Tom> It was just a thought. The "fork, don't complain" sentiment.
Normally I'm singing in the choir, Brother Tom. I think this case is
an exception.
Footnotes:
[1] Consider that the only major fork of Unicode currently in
existence is GB 18030, where the Chinese decided to create a version
of Unicode which grandfathers GB2312 in the same way that ISO 8859/1
is grandfathered in standard Unicode, and then mandated support for
that standard if you want to sell in China.
--
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
Ask not how you can "do" free software business;
ask what your business can "do for" free software.