Hi Philippe,
> > However personally, when dealing with a octet, or an > arbitrary number > > of octets, I believe the byte-pictures would be much easier > to deal with > > (especially when dealing with a lot of raw data). > > Except that it would require 256 new codepoints, instead of > just 6 for the > proposed HEX DIGIT characters. > > What is complicate, when dealing with lot of raw data, to > convert it to > nibbles then coded with numeric code points, rather than converting > bytes to code points? You just add a shift and mask operation > to output > 2 code points rather than just adding each byte as an offset of a base > code point. Still, you need to convert your raw data to suitable code > points to display the HEX BYTE characters. <snip> I never said there was anything complicated about it, I said I personally prefer the hex byte characters - They're a much more compact and elegant solution to representing octets. When dealing with protocol specifications, there's often a need for characters like these, too, since hex byte pictures are unambiguous. I have a DEC dumb terminal around here somewhere which also uses them when debugging control characters. I suppose you could argue it's purely a formatting issue, though. > What you propose is NOT a complementary set of digits for base 16, > but a complete new set of numbers in base 256, so that a glyph > like [00] will be displayed instead of just 0 (this is a > disunification > of all the existing ASCII digits, as if it was a new script > using its own > numbering system)... <snip> Well I didn't propose it, but I do like it! :) > Other historic numbering systems are used today and better suited > for representation, notably the compound base (12, 5), when > people where counting the first digit in one hand with the > first finger > pointing on the 3 phallanges of the 4 other fingers, and the other > hand was used to count the second order digit by raising each of > its 5 fingers. <snip> I do not see how historic numbering systems are appropriate for representing octets, which was the point of the proposal. I strongly doubt the Babylonians or the Mayans considered computer engineers would settle on 8-bits to a byte with base-60 or base-20 respectively. I'm not sure what you meant by most of your message, though. I'm talking about representation, in a similar vein as the control pictures section (U+2400-243F), and not a numeric system. - Simon
