murata(_at_)hokkaido(_dot_)email(_dot_)ne(_dot_)jp (MURATA Makoto) writes:
I'm just saying UTF-8 everywhere is even more unrealistic than any
other options at hand.
Too bad, because it's the only option that's remotely practical in
the long term. Do you really think every programmer who wants to
mung text is going to include code that supports not only the
hundreds of extant character encodings but also the seventeen kinds
of in-band and out-of-band declarations of them?
I think that persuading users is more difficult than
persuading programmers. I have encouraged use of Unicode
for XML in Japan, but nothing has happened.
Even in the US, when I talk to users about Unicode I get blank stares.
An awful lot of people have simply been told "UTF-8 is the same as
ASCII" and write XML in 100% ASCII, using character references or entity
references for anything outside of ASCII. Heck, they don't even specify
encoding a lot of the time, just trusting blindly in ASCII magic.
The ASCII-derived inertia in this country may favor UTF-8, but I don't
think that inertia is sufficient cause to drive the whole world toward
UTF-8. UTF-16 I could see as plausible, as more and more tools cope
with it, but that's a real change.
I thought XML was wise to demand support for at least two encodings
(UTF-8 and UTF-16) and leave the door open for others. In any case, I
don't think a revision of RFC 3023 is the place to attempt to make the
whole world use UTF-8, whether or not it's a good idea.
Simon St.Laurent
http://simonstl.com
http://monasticxml.org