From: Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@...>
Date: 2006-06-22T11:44:49+09:00
Subject: Re: Unicode roadmap?

Hi,

In message "Re: Unicode roadmap?"
    on Thu, 22 Jun 2006 08:46:08 +0900, "Michal Suchanek" <hramrach@centrum.cz> writes:

|I do not see how converting the strings on input will make the
|situation better than converting them later. The exact place where the
|text is garbled because it is converted incorrectly does not change
|the fact it is no longer usable, does it?

It does.  But if you convert encoding lazily, you will have hard time
to track down the source of the error causing data.  It may be input
data from IO, or from some GUI toolkit, or the result of operation
with variety of sources.

|> For only rare case, there might be need to handle multiple encoding in
|> an application.  I do want to allow it.  But I am not sure how we can
|> help that kind of applications, since they are fundamentally complex.
|> And we don't have enough experience to design a framework for such
|> applications.
|
|I do no think it is that rare. Most people want new web (or any other)
|stuff in utf-8 but there is need to interface legacy databases or
|applications. Sometimes converting the data to fit the new application
|is not practical. For one, the legacy application may be still used as
|well.

I understand the challenge, but I don't think it is common to run some
part of your program in legacy encoding (without conversion), and
other part in UTF-8.  You need to convert them into universal encoding
anyway for most of the cases.  That's why I said it rare.

							matz.