From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Unibyte characters Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2008 13:05:54 +0200 Message-ID: Reply-To: Eli Zaretskii NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1225451175 31424 80.91.229.12 (31 Oct 2008 11:06:15 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2008 11:06:15 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Kenichi Handa Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Fri Oct 31 12:07:16 2008 connect(): Connection refused Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1KvrqR-0004Yw-Em for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Fri, 31 Oct 2008 12:07:11 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:59608 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1KvrpK-0005qN-Pz for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Fri, 31 Oct 2008 07:06:02 -0400 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1KvrpF-0005q7-8D for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 31 Oct 2008 07:05:57 -0400 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1KvrpE-0005pE-C6 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 31 Oct 2008 07:05:56 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=40062 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1KvrpE-0005p5-64 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 31 Oct 2008 07:05:56 -0400 Original-Received: from mtaout5.012.net.il ([84.95.2.13]:23715) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1KvrpD-0003Bs-Kh for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 31 Oct 2008 07:05:55 -0400 Original-Received: from HOME-C4E4A596F7 ([77.127.192.143]) by i_mtaout5.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2004.12) with ESMTPA id <0K9L00KTMO8KBT80@i_mtaout5.012.net.il> for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 31 Oct 2008 13:07:32 +0200 (IST) X-012-Sender: halo1@inter.net.il X-detected-operating-system: by monty-python.gnu.org: Solaris 9.1 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:105187 Archived-At: The ELisp manual has (in node "Text Representation") this explanation of what is a "unibyte character": In unibyte representation, each character occupies one byte and therefore the possible character codes range from 0 to 255. Codes 0 through 127 are ASCII characters; the codes from 128 through 255 are used for one non-ASCII character set [...] But I think this is inaccurate and even misleading. For starters, unibyte buffers and strings can contain DBCS characters and UTF-8 encoded text, where a character certainly does not ``occupy one byte''. More generally, I think it is better to say that unibyte buffers and strings hold raw 8-bit bytes, and that for 8859-x and single-byte Windows codepages, each such byte represents a single character. Am I missing something?