From: Robert Klemme Date: 2010-11-25T23:24:13+09:00 Subject: Re: Ruby 1.8 vs 1.9 On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 3:07 PM, James Edward Gray II wrote: > On Nov 25, 2010, at 5:56 AM, Robert Klemme wrote: > >> But as I think about it it more likely was a statement about Java's >> implementation (because a char has only 16 bits which is not >> sufficient for all Unicode code points). > > I believe you are referring to the complaints the Asian cultures sometimes raise against Unicode.  If so, I'll try to recap the issues, as I understand them. > > First, Unicode is a bit larger than their native encodings.  Typically they get everything they need into two bytes where Unicode requires more for their languages. > > The Unicode team also made some controversial decisions that affected the Asian languages, like Han Unification (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification). > > Finally, they have a lot of legacy data in their native encodings and perfect conversion is sometimes tricky due to some context sensitive issues. James, thanks for the summary. It is much appreciated. > I think the Asian cultures have warmed a bit to Unicode over time (my opinion only), but it's important to remember that adopting it involved more challenges for them. I believe that is in part due to our western ignorance. If we would deal with encodings properly we would probably feel a similar pain - at least it would cause more pain for us. I have frequently seen i18n aspects being ignored (my pet peeve is time zones). Usually this breaks your neck as soon as people from other cultures start using your application - or such simple things happen as a change of a database server's timezone which then differs from the application server's. :-) Kind regards robert -- remember.guy do |as, often| as.you_can - without end http://blog.rubybestpractices.com/