NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/comp/std/internat/921

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-22 | 3.4 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Chiaki Ishikawa)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: Data tagging (was: 8-bit representation, plus an X problem)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 22 Dec 92 09:08:03 GMT
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Hello. I am a Japanese working at a Japanese software company in
Tokyo, Japan.

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Andrew Hume) writes:

    [long text deleted]

       for mostly these reasons, Plan 9 chose a byte-stream encoding
   (initially UTF-1 and then UTF-2) and applied it uniformly according
   to a single rule: all byte streams interpreted as characters shall
   be interpreted as a sequence of 10646 characters encoded as UTF-2.
   this applies everywhere: it applies to the kernel and file server,
   it applies to the window system and the user's display, it applies
   to names in archives and tar files. and best of all, the existing
   system and its text is, because we were an ascii site, already
   correctly encoded. (actually, we were a Latin-1 system, but we were
   willing to make user's convert latin-1 text to the new format.)

       normally, such a solution
   requires everything entering/leaving the plan 9 universe be converted.
   however as the encoding we use is backward compatible with ASCII,
   no conversion needs be done for the only important case (text files on
   networked filesystems). it also has the advantage that all programs
   can display text uniformly; users don't have to write S-JIS editors
   because the regular editor (sam or ed) edits kana/kanji just fine.
   all the conversion effort can be, and is, confined to one place
   (a program called tcs [translate character sets]). the hope is
   that is most cases, this conversion can happen automatically
   (which is how this stream arose originally; the case of mail
   and news should be easy to make happen).

The work done for plan 9 seems to be very well done in terms of I18N
character support. I think I read an article about Plan 9 itself in a
Usenix publication, but is there a technical paper specicifically
written about I18N aspect of plan 9 available? (BTW, is plan 9 named
after "Plan 9 from outer space"? Now there is a computer game based on
this movie, I have found out.)

       i believe these system (design and migration) issues have been
   essentially ignored in all the work and fuss on unicode/10646.
   i know that deep within unicode and in places like X/Open, there are
   efforts to develop support libraries for wide characters but this simply
   ignores the system issues.

               andrew hume

I agree. Characters alone don't make a system I18N. With all the
hoopla in POSIX standardization, meaning of locale still leaves so
many loose ends. However, I can say we are defining the problems
clearly now. The solutions are not in sight, though.

[e-mail]