From: Austin Ziegler Date: 2006-06-15T12:10:10+09:00 Subject: Re: Unicode roadmap? On 6/14/06, PJ Hyett wrote: > On 6/14/06, Austin Ziegler wrote: > > On 6/14/06, Charles O Nutter wrote: > > > I believe that Julik's way of solving the unicode problem (String#u > > > providing access to a unicode helper) is very attractive. I have two > > > questions related, for Julik and the rest of the peanut gallery: > > > 1. How does performance look with the unicode string add-on versus native > > > strings (or as compared to icu4r, which is C-based)? > > > 2. Is this the ideal way to support unicode strings in ruby? > > No. In fact, I believe that Matz has the right idea for M17N strings > > in Ruby 2.0. The *reality* is that there's a *lot* of data out there > > that isn't Unicode. > Yes, we all understand that Ruby 2.0 will be the coolest thing since > sliced bread, but those of us that are currently developing > international websites with Rails don't have the luxury of waiting > until Christmas of 2007. *shrug* As far as I can tell, there will be no implementation of Ruby before then that has a "native" m17n string. So whether you have the luxury of waiting or not, Ruby 1.8.x will not *ever* have a "Unicode string". Adding a "Unicode string" would *break* behaviour, and no example is better than the extension that was proposed which would change the meaning of #size and #length to mean two different things. So, there's a point where patience is going to be necessary, whether you "have the luxury" or not. -austin -- Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com * http://www.halostatue.ca/ * austin@halostatue.ca * http://www.halostatue.ca/feed/ * austin@zieglers.ca