> On 23 Jul 2018, at 18:52, Richard O'Keefe <rao...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Oh, I think a clarification is needed when talking about UTF-8.
Why ?
> To the best of my knowledge you don't need a Byte-Order-Mark at
> the beginning of a UTF-8 stream because there is no byte order
> issue to result,
Nothing was said about BOMs.
> but apparently many Windows programs like to add one.
Apparently yes.
> Does/will Pharo add one when writing a UTF-8 file?
No
> Does/will it skip one when reading a UTF-8 file?
Yes
> I find the new approach produces unattractive code. I can do
> all of the examples simply in a system that
> (a) implements the ANSI Smalltalk FileStream class methods
Given a FileReference object of some kind you ask for the streams you need.
Seems pretty OO if you ask me.
Do you prefer a global class side factory facade ?
Both approaches are not exclusive per se, we just want a clear break/difference
(because the resulting streams are not 100% the same).
> (b) supports '/dev/stdin' and '/dev/stdout' as file names
Maybe, with special casing. I like 'Stdio stdout' better as it is more cross
platform.
> (c) interprets the external type #'text' either as #'utf8' LC_CTYPE
Maybe, but that is not very Smalltalk like is it ? You want users to set
environment variables ? Anyway this is less important point as UTF-8 is (should
be) the general default.
> What document should I read to get a mental model of the new
> system and understand its rationale?
ML discussions over the year, I guess.
We are generally against big hairy complex classes and prefer simpler ones.
