[quoted lines by Aura Kelloniemi on 2021/04/15 at 15:36 +0300]

>From a C programmers view it is complete waste of resources to pass 
>regionSize, andMaskSize and orMaskSize to brlapi__write, if they have the same 
>value anyways.

That's why I'm saying that the mask sizes, just like the text size, should be 
optional. A few extra bytes in a packet won't hurt anything, and those bits of 
the packet are controlled by what we might call "has been explicitly specified" 
flags.

>Similarly for a C programmer it makes sense to use NUL-terminated strings, but
>for all other languages it is pointless.

Yes, that should remain. All I'm saying on this point is that assuming a 
single-byte character set, rather than assuming UTF-8, isn't the right way to 
do things these days. This (unfortunate) assumption in the code dates back 
rather far.
>In my opinion it is not a bad idea to sometimes have both interfaces – those
>that are most convenient for C programmers, and those that are easiest for the
>ones who call C through FFI. We don't need to change brlapi__write, if adding
>another function makes sense.

That can become tedious when we find other things to add. Adding such fields 
isn't inconvenient for C programmers as long as they either use the .name= 
syntax for their own initializers or use the probvided initializer and then 
just set the fields they want to.

>If brlapi__writeTextUtf8 is added so that it does not rely on the
>NUL-terminator but has a size parameter, I am done with this discussion.

Well, I think it should be easy to write a UTF-8 string, and easy shouldn't 
require the programmer to have to calculate the UTF-8 character count. The 
programmer should, in the simple case, still be able to pass nothing more than 
a quoted string.

It's all-too-easy to get caught up in implementation details while forgetting 
the end user. I think that approach is wrong.

-- 
I believe the Bible to be the very Word of God: http://Mielke.cc/bible/
Dave Mielke            | 2213 Fox Crescent | WebHome: http://Mielke.cc/
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