Unicode 7

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Thu, 01 May 2014 21:42:21 -0700, Rustom Mody wrote:


> Whats the best cure for headache?
> 
> Cut off the head

o_O

I don't think so.


> Whats the best cure for Unicode?
> 
> Ascii

Unicode is not a problem to be solved.

The inability to write standard human text in ASCII is a problem, e.g. 
one cannot write

“ASCII For Dummies” © 2014 by Zöe Smith, now on sale 99¢

so even *Americans* cannot represent all their common characters in 
ASCII, let alone specialised characters from mathematics, science, the 
printing industry, and law. And even Americans sometimes need to write 
text in Foreign. Where is your ASCII now?

The solution is to have at least one encoding which contains the 
additional characters needed.

The plethora of such additional encodings is a problem. The solution is a 
single encoding that covers all needed characters, like Unicode, so that 
there is no need to handle multiple encodings.

The inability for plain text files to record metadata of what encoding 
they use is a problem. The solution is to standardize on a single, world-
wide encoding, like Unicode.


> Saying however that there is no headache in unicode does not make the
> headache go away:
> 
> http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2014/1/5/unicode-in-2-and-3/
> 
> No I am not saying that the contents/style/tone are right. However
> people are evidently suffering the transition. Denying it is not a help.

Transitions are always more painful than after the transition has settled 
down. As I have said repeatedly, I look forward for the day when nobody 
but document archivists and academics need care about legacy encodings. 
But we're not there yet.


> And unicode consortium's ways are not exactly helpful to its own cause:
> Imagine the C standard committee deciding that adding mandatory garbage
> collection to C is a neat idea
> 
> Unicode consortium's going from old BMP to current (6.0) SMPs to
> who-knows-what in the future is similar.

I don't see the connection.



-- 
Steven D'Aprano
http://import-that.dreamwidth.org/