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Re: XML 1.1 grinds to halt?

• To: Bob Foster <bob@x...>
• Subject: Re: XML 1.1 grinds to halt?
• From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>
• Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2003 11:23:09 -0700
• Cc: XML Dev <xml-dev@l...>
• In-reply-to: <174301c30e77$e2d1e750$1401a8c0@snobird>
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Bob Foster wrote:

> I'm puzzled. What is the "aha moment" here? Your point seems to be that Java
> char != Unicode character. True. Exactly like UTF-8 octet != Unicode
> character. The fact that half a surrogate pair is not a Unicode character
> doesn't seem like breaking news.

The 'aha' moment was the point that it's safer to use strings rather 
than characters as the primitives of your API, because what to a human 
may look like a single character may be a composition of several unicode 
characters, which looks like a string to the program.

> Do you mean to say that use of UTF-16 character encoding in a programming
> language is broken as designed? In the perfect language of your own design,
> would you have the "char" type be 32 bits? Is that what this is all about?

I'm in the middle of a series of essays on this over at 'ongoing'
-- 
Cheers, Tim Bray
         (ongoing fragmented essay: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/)

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: XML 1.1 grinds to halt?
    • From: "Bob Foster" <bob@x...>

• References:
  • XML 1.1 grinds to halt?
    • From: Mike Champion <mc@x...>
  • Re: XML 1.1 grinds to halt?
    • From: "Rick Jelliffe" <ricko@a...>
  • Re: XML 1.1 grinds to halt?
    • From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>
  • Re: XML 1.1 grinds to halt?
    • From: "Rick Jelliffe" <ricko@a...>
  • Re: XML 1.1 grinds to halt?
    • From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>
  • Re: XML 1.1 grinds to halt?
    • From: "Bob Foster" <bob@x...>

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