Mark Crispin <mrc(_at_)CAC(_dot_)Washington(_dot_)EDU> wrote:
Step back from the tree to see the forest. "Some tweaking" includes
such small details as not assuming that one byte means one screen space,
which has all sorts of implications in GUI programs and screen editors.
Don't forget that you don't just have variable length characters in
UTF-8, but you also have variable width characters in Unicode, plus
characters which interact with other characters in interesting ways.
I do not know the situation on other platforms, but on Mac OS X the system
libraries -- including GUI frameworks -- operate on UTF-16 strings
internally and support UNICODE internally. I would expect this to be common
on most platforms today or in the very near future. IOW, this whole issue
is likely to be allready solved by the host platform for the "GUI programs
and screen editors".
There are other parts of the infrastructure where I would worry far more
about the "width and length" of characters.
--
When I decide that the situation is unacceptable for me, I'll simply fork
the tree. I do _not_ appreciate being enlisted into anyone's holy wars,
so unless you _really_ want to go _way_ up in my personal shitlist don't
play politics in my vicinity. -- Alexander Viro on lkml