Lennart Augustsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote,
> "Manuel M. T. Chakravarty" wrote:
>
> > Currently, most Haskell systems don't support unicode anyway
> > (I think, hbc is the only exception), so I guess this is not
> > a pressing issue. As soon as, we have unicode support and
> > there is a need for lexers handling unicode input, I am
> > willing to extend the lexer library to gracefully handle the
> > cases that you outlined.
> I'm sorry, but I much object (strongly) towards this attitude.
> It's this kind of reasoning that stops Unicode from becoming
> widespread.
I am tempted to agree with you. I am just a lazy bastard,
that's the problem.
> Soon the GHC people (or whoever :) will say "Well, why should we
> support Unicode, there's all this software out there that breaks down
> with it." and we're in a viscious circle.
Hmmm, in this particular case nothing breaks down. The
lexer combinators themselves never internally use the
assumption that a char is 8bit (I may be lazy, but I still
prefer clean code). Only when you explicily use them to
build a scanner that does scan unicode files (and is aware
of it), you might run into space efficiency problems.
> Strong hint to various people:
> Haskell has had Unicode for a long time now. I think that before
> you start implementing various extensions to Haskell, perhaps you
> should implement what the standard says should be there.
> Implementing Unicode isn't that hard, just a few days work.
You might be pleased to hear that - if I am not mistaken -
Qrczak is working at Unicode support for ghc.
> Strongly opposing Anglosaxan language imperialism
:-)
Manuel
