From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Tom Lord Newsgroups: gmane.lisp.guile.devel Subject: Re: Unicode and Guile Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2003 17:03:18 -0700 (PDT) Sender: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Message-ID: <200310260003.RAA10375@morrowfield.regexps.com> References: <20031021171534.GA13246@lark> NNTP-Posting-Host: deer.gmane.org X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1067125962 15551 80.91.224.253 (25 Oct 2003 23:52:42 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2003 23:52:42 +0000 (UTC) Cc: guile-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sun Oct 26 01:52:40 2003 Return-path: Original-Received: from monty-python.gnu.org ([199.232.76.173]) by deer.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1ADYD2-0003pm-00 for ; Sun, 26 Oct 2003 01:52:40 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.24) id 1ADYCM-0005Va-Az for guile-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 25 Oct 2003 19:51:58 -0400 Original-Received: from list by monty-python.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.24) id 1ADYC1-0005Tm-Jd for guile-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 25 Oct 2003 19:51:37 -0400 Original-Received: from mail by monty-python.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.24) id 1ADYBU-0005Fv-8U for guile-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 25 Oct 2003 19:51:35 -0400 Original-Received: from [65.234.195.244] (helo=morrowfield.regexps.com) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.24) id 1ADYBR-0005Cz-2w; Sat, 25 Oct 2003 19:51:01 -0400 Original-Received: (from lord@localhost) by morrowfield.regexps.com (8.9.1/8.9.1) id RAA10375; Sat, 25 Oct 2003 17:03:18 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from lord@morrowfield.regexps.com) Original-To: s11@member.fsf.org In-reply-to: (message from Stephen Compall on 25 Oct 2003 18:08:45 +0100) X-BeenThere: guile-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.2 Precedence: list List-Id: Developers list for Guile, the GNU extensibility library List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.lisp.guile.devel:2923 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.lisp.guile.devel:2923 > From: Stephen Compall > UTF-16 seems to offer the worst of > both worlds. [being both wide compared to 8-bit characters and involving variable length unicode character encodings, I presume.] It's culturually discriminatory to regard utf-16 as worse than utf-8 in those regards. Or, put differently, for many potential users, utf-16 is the best of both worlds: it optimizes the size of the most common characters (for some users), and it can also handle any Unicode character. > As for the semantics, I submit the way Emacs does it: node (elisp)Text > Representations, or > http://www.gnu.org/manual/elisp-manual-21-2.8/html_node/elisp_542.html What do the index arguments to STRING-REF and STRING-SET refer to? Byte positions or character positions? (Personally, I think they refer to byte positions and that new errors can result from them (if the index isn't at a character boundary). (Too bad that (1+ index) no longer means (next-character string index)). There's a need for a new type, `text', which acts like the text contents of an emacs buffer and has (yes I agree) pretty much the Emacs interface. It should all be designed so that, internally, people can write new ways to represent text objects and multiple text object representations can coexist in the same application (just like emacs). There's no good reason not to throw in attributes, overlays, and markers for text objects too (just like emacs). ("There's nothing new under the sun.") And, eventually, people should mostly stop using the STRING? type altogether except internally to implementations of TEXT? and as a way to represent non-textual strings of bytes. "Everything is UTF-32" isn't going to be practical for a long time and then, after it is, the first roughly homonoid space-aliens to show up with news of a life-filled galaxy will mean UTF-32 won't be practical all over again :-) -t _______________________________________________ Guile-devel mailing list Guile-devel@gnu.org http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/guile-devel