RE: UTF-7 and java

Thierry,

Fortunately UTF-7 is not very common and because it is Unicode 2.0 based
will probably die.  My big gripe is iso-2022 which seems to flourish.

You can not do much with these code pages other than convert the data to
Unicode or a more useful code page.  You can not use conventional functions
with code pages that are dependent on state shifting.  The to example of
functions like strchr, strstr or strtok.  That the case to strstr.  If you
have the proper start shift characters in the comparison string and look for
the characters only when the shift states match you will end up pointing to
string data that contains no shift information.  In other words garbage.

I once worked on a display system that had windows of data overlaying other
data and the character set was shifted.  What a mess.

Carl


> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-international-request@w3.org
> [mailto:www-international-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Thierry Sourbier
> Sent: Friday, August 24, 2001 11:56 PM
> To: www-international@w3.org
> Subject: Re: UTF-7 and java
>
>
> > > Quoting Carl Brown
> > >
> > >How long do we have to maintain 7 bit telecommunications capability?
>
> Don't ask me, I have no clue :)).  All I can see is that RFC2152
> is not yet
> marked obsolete therefore if I were a disciplined developper I might be
> tempted to follow it if I need to deal with SMTP :). That said I totally
> agree that old technologies should be phased out at some point.
> If would be
> great if we can consider that using 8 bits everywhere is safe,
> but who will
> give the signal?
>
> May be Khurram Ilyas could help us understand why he needs to use
> UTF-7? May
> be we can convince him than UTF-8 is just so much better and is
> now safe for
> what he wants to do :).
>
> By the way there was a 7 hours delay between the time I send my
> posting and
> the time it was received :(. This means that my answer was written well
> before John Cowan's one (hence me not taking into account his comments).
>
> Have all a great week end,
>
> Cheers,
> Thierry Sourbier
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----------
> -----------------
> www.i18ngurus.com - Open Internationalization Resources Directory
>
>
>
>

Received on Saturday, 25 August 2001 12:54:39 UTC