Unicode Chinese Mac

[Dar Scott]

On May 11, 2005, at 9:27 AM, Lynn Fredricks wrote:

>> So, for some types of processing, using UTF8 might be better
>> than host UTF16.
>
> My understanding is that UTF16 is preferable to UTF8 if you plan on 
> sorting
> your data. Valentina 2 supports UTF16 for this reason.

Good point.  I should have qualified that to apply within Transcript 
and especially related to chunks.

Even so, if the sort is, say, UCA-DUCET from UTS #10, then conversion 
would be a small part of the time.  If the sort is a code-point sort, 
then UTF16 could be better.

Alas, in Transcript doing a code-point sort (I would guess) would need 
something like UTF16BE (with a BOM or some other prefix to prevent 
numerical comparisons).  (I'm ignoring surrogates.)

Even so, in UTF8, like characters will sort by code point, so 
Transcript comparison and sorting can be useful in a rough sort of way. 
  ASCII code point sorting will be exact.  And automatic numeral 
comparisons in Transcript will apply.

Both in today's ad hoc solutions and in future Revolution technology, 
it should not matter that much the form used as long as we can convert 
quickly across interface boundaries.

Dar

-- 
**********************************************
     DSC (Dar Scott Consulting & Dar's Lab)
     http://www.swcp.com/dsc/
     Programming and software
**********************************************