bicknell(_at_)ufp(_dot_)org (Leo Bicknell) wrote on 04.01.03 in
<20030104070638(_dot_)GA19760(_at_)ussenterprise(_dot_)ufp(_dot_)org>:
In a message written on Fri, Jan 03, 2003 at 09:01:42PM -0800, Russ Allbery
wrote: It's best to think of all 8-bit character data as encoded.
UTF-8 is just as much an encoding as RFC 2047. UTF-16 is an encoding.
UTF-32 is an encoding. You're going to have to deal with an encoding,
no
Per unicode.org (gotta love google) there are 13 formal standards
for encoding unicode, and at least a half dozen more. That's an
Reality check: most of them are irrelevant to the real world.
order of magnitude too many. While I would like one, the world
has existed fine with two (US-ASCII & ISO-8859-1), and three might
Reality check: the world *has not* existed fine with US-ASCII & ISO 8859-
1. Even when US-ASCII was relatively new as the US variant of ISO 646,
there were a lot of other national variants around (I'd think 13 wouldn't
be far off), and that was only North America and Western Europe. If you
start looking at the ISO 2022 area and beginning to really offer solutions
to *the world*, I think you'll get closer to 50 or so charsets *in*
*actual* *use*. That *is* what the world exists with.
work. 13, no way no how give up now if you think that might work.
13 - even if anyone would suggest supporting all of those, which nobody
does AFAICT - is still *vastly* better than what we have today. Have a
look at your iconv library one of these days.
The world can deal with a fairly small set of encodings. The world
cannot deal with a large (> 5) number of the.
Your definition of "world" is way off.
I hate to be an arrogant american in this, but I will take that
role. If, after we adopt something better (unicode? something
else? I dunoo) you can't speak a character set on the Internet
you don't deserve to be online.
So go offline already. *You* are the one claiming to be unable to cope
with a solution that is significantly easier that what we have today.
world does not speak english. So, I will adopt software that allows
the majority of foreign (to me) languages to work. If some obscure
language with 1,000 speakers who's country GDP is less than my
sallary is excluded excuse me if I don't care.
Well, there is exactly one technology available to meet that spec, and
it's Unicode. And it *does* tend to solve the 1000 speakers problem - if
you can show such a community with so-far unencoded characters which
actually wants to use them on computers, your chances of getting those
characters assigned are pretty good.
(Some people claim that 2022 is another such solution. Except it isn't -
all it does is label the differences.)
If there is anything technology has proved it is that standards
are good. I'm not going to hold my breath for one worldwide
"language", but the ones on the fringes can die and go away.
The ones on the fringe are exactly those supporting the big standards. The
ones not exactly on the fringe (like the US) are typically the ones
supporting standards like US-ASCII that work only locally.
While I run sendmail, it is not the only mail system. qmail,
vmmail, etc all are widely used. Change the RFC, then complain
about the program.
And the IETF seems to reject every effort to make mail use more than
US_ASCII without imposing additional encodings on top of whatever you
already have.
That, IMO, is the real cause for the problem here.
At least, in general, mail has MIME, which has
a number of ways to encode unicode in a standard. That said, "raw"
mail is still of value, and should be made to "just work".
You think so, I think so.
Universal flag days, as you point out, aren't going to work. I'm
therefore becoming increasingly resigned to having to deal with encodings
pretty much forever, or at least for the forseeable future. So in answer
If we have to use (many) encodings then all of this is going to fail.
Period. Full stop. Whatever the "." character means in your language.
There seems to be no other option available.
other is saying? I am 100% sure that worldwide communication will
lead to one, and only one worldwide language. In my lifetime?
Doubtful. In my childrens? Likely.
Now you're out in fantasy land. The way to bet is that "one language"
won't happen even in several centuries. Humans just aren't wired that way.
MfG Kai