Asmus Freytag 14/7/'12, 0:28:
7/13/2012 2:42 PM, David Starner wrote:
Fri, Jul 13, 2012 at 1:29 PM, Jukka K. Korpela:
2012-07-13 22:37, David Starner wrote:
Wikipedia says "The Unicode standard recommends against the BOM for
UTF-8." and refers to page 30 of the Unicode Standard, version 6.0,
that says "Use of a BOM is neither required nor recommended for
UTF-8..." Calling it a myth seems bizarre.
“Not recommended” is distinct from “recommends against”.
I disagree; the meaning of the two phrases overlaps in my idolect, and
while it would be somewhat laconic, I might use "not recommended" to
mean "if you insist on doing that, please give us a chance to get the
fire extinguisher first",
I can state confidently and unequivocally that it is not used in that
sense in the standard, and by reading the whole phrase it's clear that
it is intended as statement of neutrality on the part of the Unicode
Standard - respectfully being aware of the difference between a
character encoding and a data transmission (or file format) protocol.
Thank you for confirming that the view that Unicode reccomend against the UTF-8
BOM, is a myth/misreading.
I have tried to correct what Wikipedia says once, pointing as I did, to the fact that it
is a misreading of the standard. But it got "reverted".
Next time someone tries to correct it, he/she can point to your reply here. However, it would be
nice if the standard e.g. added "That is to say: the Unicode standard takes a neutral standpoint.", or eventually reformulated the statement.
Because, what it says now, is easily misunderstood - even by the members of the
Unicode mailing list ...
The problems with current wording are 3-fold:
- to use negative wording in order to express neutrality, can in and by itself
confusing
- the 'neither ... nor ...' construct is easily confusing - I tried to use it in the HTML
working group once, and I immediately got "corrected".
- "nor recommended" reminds about the "NOT RECOMMENDED" of rfc 2119. Why not rather use "OPTIONAL" to express the neutral stance that Unicode takes in a positive wording that do take its meaning from rfc 2119?
--
Leif Halvard Silli
