Odds and ends

Hi Folks,

Things that may be of interest.

1. On the ratio of program documentation to program code:

                Dijkstra has stated that a reasonable

                proportion of documentation volumes

                of program design/program code is

                ten to one. Consequently Dijkstra

                wouldn’t raise his eyebrows if a source

                code of ten pages is based upon design

                documentation of one hundred pages.

                He has pointed out that it is not the

                design documentation that is extensive

                but the source code that is compressed!

2. On meaning:

                The meaning of the bits in computer

memory is not in the computer but in

the mind of the programmer.

3. On the ubiquity of unicode:

                TEDx talk in Vienna about the

decodeunicode project:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRdupNXpm8k

4. On handling conflicting information in the XML encoding declaration, the charset param (in HTML or in the HTTP header), and BOM:

                Henry Thompson is seeking comments

                about the work he and others are doing

                to clean up the ambiguity:

                http://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2013-m12/0017.html

/Roger