Re: Bit arithmetic on Unicode characters?

[Asmus Freytag (c)]

On 10/6/2016 12:44 PM, Garth Wallace wrote: Other than converting between UTFs, is bit arithmetic commonly performed on Unicode characters? I was under the impression that it's a rarity if it is done at all. I've been working on a proposal for additional chess symbols used in chess problems and variant games, and I've been in communication with the World Federation for Chess Composition, which is the international organization in charge of chess problems. We have agreement on the repertoire and the text of the proposal, but the arrangement of the proposed characters within the new block is a sticking point. Some representatives of the WFCC have proposed alternate arrangements that assume there will be a need for bitwise operations to covert between the existing chess symbols in the Miscellaneous Symbols block and related symbols in the new block. I don't see the need but maybe I'm missing something. Bit arithmetic was used for ASCII-only systems to do case mappings. I'm sure it had its advantages in the times of severely constrained memory and very slow processors, but it's really not extensible, is it? Offset calculations are commonly performed on digits, even today; so it would not be too much of a stretch to expect that for a subset of symbols for which there is a need of a common processing step, there might be attention paid to making easy offset calculations possible. A./