Hi Folks,
In the book "Fonts & Encodings" it says (I think) that endianness is relevant
only when storing data on disks.
Why is endianness is not relevant when data is in memory?
On page 62 it says:
... when we store ... data on disk, we write
not 32-bit (or 16-bit) numbers but series of
four (or two) bytes. And according to the
type of processor (Intel or RISC), the most
significant byte will be written either first
(the "little-endian" system) or last (the
"big-endian" system). Therefore we have
both a UTF-32BE and a UTF-32LE, a UTF-16BE
and a UTF-16LE.
Then, on page 63 it says:
... UTF-16 or UTF-32 ... if we specify one of
these, either we are in memory, in which case
the issue of representation as a sequence of
bytes does not arise, or we are using a method
that enables us to detect the endianness of the
document.
When data is in memory isn't it important to know whether the most significant
byte is first or last?
Does this mean that when exchanging Unicode data across the Internet the
endianness is not relevant?
Are these stated correctly:
When Unicode data is in a file we would say, for example, "The file
contains UTF-32BE data."
When Unicode data is in memory we would say, "There is UTF-32 data in
memory."
When Unicode data is sent across the Internet we would say, "The UTF-32
data was sent across the Internet."
/Roger
