From: Austin Ziegler <halostatue@...>
Date: 2006-06-15T01:17:17+09:00
Subject: Re: A plan for another unicode string hack

On 6/14/06, Dae San Hwang <daesan@gmail.com> wrote:
> My proposed change won't disturb anyone's existing codes unless you
> set $KCODE to be 'u' as well in that code. If you did set $KCODE to
> 'u' in your previous projects, you don't have to apply this hack
> (which hasn't been implemented yet) to that project.

Um. PDF::Writer is a library, and I think that I use both depending on
how the code reads.

> Matz has said several times that he will maximize the breakage moving
> to Ruby 2.0. If Matz is going to make these changes for Ruby 2.0, (as
> implied in Guy Decoux's posting) I think I will just follow along. My
> goal is to provide Ruby 2.0 forward compatible unicode support until
> the move is complete.

Yes, I undertstand. Making #size and #length return different values
is a mistake. Without referring to documentation, how would you know
which returns the number of characters and  which one returns the
number of bytes?

They should always *either* return characters or bytes (preferably
characters) and a separate call should be introduced for the
alternative meaning. One that is explicit in its name to match its
meaning.

-austin
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