From: Tim Bray <tbray@...>
Date: 2006-08-02T03:41:25+09:00
Subject: Re: state of unicode support

Daniel DeLorme wrote:

> I second that. I see a lot of people asking for "transparent" unicode 
> support but I don't see how that is possible. To me it's like asking for 
> a language that has transparent bug recovery. I know that ruby has 
> weaknesses when it comes to multibyte encodings, but the main problem is 
> human in nature; too many people assume that char==byte, which results 
> in bugs when someone unexpectedly uses "weird" characters. IMHO no 
> amount of "transparent support" will change that. But I would love to be 
> shown otherwise with examples of languages that "do it right".

It can be done.  Java gets it almost right, and in such a way that most 
people will never stub their toes on the flaws.  Python, it seems, is 
going to get it right next time around.  It's clearly possible to do 
Unicode correctly.   What Matz wants is much harder; a String type that 
can contain strings of characters from arbitrary character sets in 
arbitrary encodings, Unicode being just one special case, and also serve 
as a byte buffer.

  -Tim