--- F J Franklin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I think Java uses UTF-16.
I bet that older versions of Java used UCS-2 and newer versions use UTF-16 since they're mostly compatible, but that's just a guess. > UTF-32 is a subset of UCS-4, I believe. My > impression is that UTF-8 and > UCS-4 have less to do with UNICODE than UTF-16 and > UTF-32. I still don't know exactly how all of them relate. This is an annoyance of Unicode - many things at least seem muddy to those of us on the outside. UCS is "Universal character set", which basically means the mapping of a number onto a character. As such UCS-2 *should* mean the old 16-bit range of Unicode characters and UCS-4 *should* mean the new (up to) 32-bit range of Unicode characters. UCS does not specify how this number is encoded into various sequences of bits/bytes/words/etc. UTF is "Unicode Transformation Format", which basically means the algorithm used to encode the UCS number of each character into one or more units. UTF-8 encodes any UCS character index into one or more 8-bit units. UTF-16 encodes any UCS character index into one or more 16-bit units. UTF-32 encodes any UCS character index one (and no more) 32-bit units. That ought to be the definition but in practice or at least in common usage the terms all get muddied ): > I was using: > http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/ISO-10646-UTF-8.html > > Some other links for the curious: > http://czyborra.com/utf/ > http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Unicode-HOWTO-1.html > http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/unicode.html Thanks for the pointers! Here are some I find useful: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-utf8/ (not just UTF-8) http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ (old but it covers many issues we are going to be grappling with) http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-i18n-list/ (Pango discussion takes place here) > Andrew, thanks for the answer. Personally I see no > problem using UTF-8 > internally, but I don't do piecetable work so it's > not really my call. I > wasn't trying to preempt the decision; the new class > is just a utility. Neither do I. I eagerly await what specific things Dom hopefully has to say on Monday... Frank, I know you weren't preempting anything but I'm glad it came up since now is the time it needs to come up (: Andrew Dunbar. > Frank > > Francis James Franklin > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > "No, she really likes me. She told me I look like > Britney Spears, and why > would you say that to somebody you don't like?" > > --- Elle Woods > > ===== http://linguaphile.sourceforge.net http://www.abisource.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my.yahoo.com
