From: Vincent Isambart <vincent.isambart@...>
Date: 2007-10-20T05:54:30+09:00
Subject: Re: Unicode: Progress??

> Also, what about other encodings, besides Unicode?
> How would these be supported, if not via dynamically loaded libraries?
The well supported encodings will probably be UTF-8, Shift-JIS, EUC-JP
and ASCII. JRuby will probably have a good support for UTF-16. For the
other encodings, the best solution will probably to use Iconv or
something similar to work internally in UTF-8.
If you are using already existing files I understand you may want to
use other encodings but for new stuff I really recommend to go with
unicode encodings (and I'm not saying it that only for Ruby - even
though under Windows UTF-8 is not very well supported).

> Originally, I intended to port our embedded application from Ruby
> 1.6.8 to 1.8.6 for the (very valid) reasons that you cite.
> We only are moving from 1.6.8 because some obscure gc bug
> causes random crashes in our app. [The only non-standard
> library we use is termios]
And this type of bug is generally quite painful to find and correct.
And even if you have a correction for this bug you may be limited for
future evolutions.

> Further, the language spec is changing enough that the choice between
> 1.8 or 1.9 is not just about implementation.  For instance, 1.9's new
> hash (and the better keyword argument syntax that enables) are
> attractive.  We have biologists writing simple Ruby scripts for control
> of chemical protocols, so our end-users will benefit
> from this change.
>
> I'm still unsure as to whether I've made the right choice.  Any well
> reasoned feedback would be appreciated.
I'm not 100% sure 1.9 will be ready for prime time by mid 2008 (it
also depends on how you use ruby, if you run it for long periods of
time you are of course more likely to encounter strange bugs). But if
you have a reproducible bug in 1.9 you are without a doubt more likely
to find someone able to correct it.
And well you know doing accurate predictions in IT is very difficult ;).
But for the longer term I do not think it is a bad idea because even
if ruby were to go in a direction that is not the best for you, I am
pretty sure the other implementations will at least implement the 1.9
language changes.