- From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <Harald@Alvestrand.no>
- Date: Thu, 16 Dec 1999 16:24:01 +0100
- To: (wrong string) çois Yergeau <yergeau@ALIS.COM>, "'Ira Mcdonald'" <imcdonal@sdsp.mc.xerox.com>, ietf-charsets@iana.org
At 09:26 16.12.99 -0500, =?UNKNOWN?Q?Fran=E7ois?= Yergeau wrote:
> > De: Ira Mcdonald [mailto:imcdonal@sdsp.mc.xerox.com]
> > Date: mercredi 15 décembre 1999 23:32
> >
> > Over the wire, UTF-16 has a long list of drawbacks
> > and no visible advantages. It shouldn't be 'legitimized'
> > by IETF Proposed Standard designation.
>
>I wouldn't really object to Informative instead of PS, but would like to
>hear more about that "long list of drawbacks". My own list is rather short
>and parts of it are related to C string and ASCII-thinking and will
>disappear over time. I also have a (short) list of advantages.
My list of disadvantages:
- No compatibility with cstrings due to NULL
- Inability to represent characters outside Planes 0-16
- VERY bad expansion factor for characters outside Plane 0 (100% overhead)
- No ability to mix ASCII and UTF-16 elements in a simple viewer
- Two incompatible byte orders
My list of advantages:
- Does not require conversion between UCS-2 and UTF-16 when only Plane 0
characters are used in the UTF-16
Note that the single advantage may be listed as a disadvantage if there
turns out to be lots of applications that "support" UTF-16 the way they
currently "support" Unicode - by throwing away the high-order bits....
Harald A
--
Harald Tveit Alvestrand, EDB Maxware, Norway
Harald.Alvestrand@edb.maxware.no
Received on Thursday, 16 December 1999 12:58:37 UTC