Miscellaneous > The Lounge

Who invented char sets?

<< < (3/4) > >>

Calum:

--- Quote from: muzzy ---16 bits isn't enough in the long run IMO. I think 21 bits are currently used out of the 32bit unicode format, which is what utf-8 can provide with 4 octets. The 21 bit glyph space should be large enough, but utf-8 has space for extension if necessary.
--- End quote ---
brilliant. that's exactly what's needed.


--- Quote ---Also, it's silly to say that windows couldn't do it because windows kernel has been fully unicode for years already.
--- End quote ---
it's misleading right enough, but what he means i think is that a lot of windows programs that users have gopt used to depending on will have no intention of using the newer charsets - i wouldn't know if this is the case, or if the charset is back compatible with older 7 bit ascii one or not.
--- Quote ---Also, linux has a lot of issues regarding multibyte character sequence because a lot of things starting from strlen() tend to break. All manually implemented string processing breaks, and there's a lot of that in most C applications. A lot of the same issue apply to windows, too, although there's a compatibility system which tries to make things a little bit transparent and it works fine a lot of the time.
--- End quote ---
hmm, although i am hesitant to imagine there is not some equivalent in linux systems doing the same job.


--- Quote ---Everything in windows is unicode (if we disregard win9x),
--- End quote ---
something we cannot do, even though you always do so in your examples about windows. simply put windows 98 is the public face of windows for many users, and for many windows 2000 or xp users, their windows skills were all learnt on windows 98. Windows 98 has had a huge influence on computing for normal users, whether you admit it or not.
--- Quote ---and the winapi provides separate versions of all api functions for unicode and ascii strings. If you're a programmer, you've noticed CreateFileA vs CreateFileW and things like that. A and W stand for ASCII and widechar accordingly.
--- End quote ---
sensible.


--- Quote ---Basically, people just need to learn to write new applications using unicode strings. This would be significantly easier in a high level language that has some sort of string abstraction, so it's time to abandon C as the primary application programming language. Was about the time, too :)
--- End quote ---

has it not been superceded by C++ and all that VB crap?

Jack2000:
Thanks for the info :)
there should really be a convention
and a NEW all in one "char set"

muzzy:
Jack, unicode is this "all in one charset". :)

Calum, linux has issues starting from the shell. If you hit a multibyte key it will render one symbol, but backspacing it might erase n symbols - as it erases n bytes from the buffer as well...

Regarding win9x, I think it shouldn't be used anymore and even though it has influenced everyone's windows experiences, it's not the standard anymore. Win9x has its own unicode implementation, but iirc it was a little retarded. I didn't quite like it when I had a look at it earlier.

And even though C++ is becoming more and more widespread, people still use char* arrays instead of wchar_t*, and wstring doesn't tend to work in most compilers... It's just a pain in the ass to actually write any software that way. C# might remedy the situation, and VB.NET perhaps.

I believe the true turn of the tide will begin with mirc implements utf8 (and enables it by default). This would thrust the whole world, both windows and unix, into fully unicode aware situations. When communications become utf8 aware, so does everything else :)

Aloone_Jonez:

--- Quote from: muzzy ---Calum, linux has issues starting from the shell. If you hit a multibyte key it will render one symbol, but backspacing it might erase n symbols - as it erases n bytes from the buffer as well...
--- End quote ---

What about the Windows console?
From what I've gathered it only supports ASCII.


--- Quote from: muzzy ---Regarding win9x, I think it shouldn't be used anymore and even though it has influenced everyone's windows experiences, it's not the standard anymore. Win9x has its own unicode implementation, but iirc it was a little retarded. I didn't quite like it when I had a look at it earlier.
--- End quote ---

Windows 9x was the most retarded OS ever, (you must agree with me on this) the problem is many Windows programmers are used to this so MS are afraid of making the new OS more secure is it'd break a lot of old software. (off topic I know but it had to  be said)

Calum:
c# and vb.net are unlikely to rectify any problem which is found in C or C++ code...

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page