On Sat, 22 Feb 2003, Terje Bless wrote: > I do not know the situation on other platforms, but on Mac OS X the system > libraries -- including GUI frameworks -- operate on UTF-16 strings > internally and support UNICODE internally. I would expect this to be common > on most platforms today or in the very near future. IOW, this whole issue > is likely to be allready solved by the host platform for the "GUI programs > and screen editors".
I suggest that you read up on stringprep. There's quite a lot that needs to be done that isn't done by these libraries. > There are other parts of the infrastructure where I would worry far more > about the "width and length" of characters. Even if the OS and libraries support Unicode, the application programs still need to use those routines. You can't expect to take an old program and have it magically become Unicode-savvy. All you have to do is look at Windows, which has been Unicode savvy for years longer than Mac. Most applications on Windows are still not Unicode savvy. A Unicode savvy application has to be designed to be Unicode savvy from the ground up. As soon as you get into GUIs, you have all sorts of other wonderful details to worry about. You actually have to alter the layout of your GUI on a script-dependent basis. No amount of OS libraries will do this for you. There are some simplifying assumptions that you may be able to make for newsgroup names. Maybe. It won't work for text. It ain't just a matter of wider characters and bigger fonts. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
