UPD Mail Archive: Re: UPD> Unicode support

Re: UPD> Unicode support

From: don@lexmark.com
Date: Thu Feb 17 2000 - 10:22:46 EST

  • Next message: Manros, Carl-Uno B: "RE: UPD> Unicode support"

    I too believe UTF-8 is the way to go.

    **********************************************
    * Don Wright don@lexmark.com *
    * Director, Strategic & Technical Alliances *
    * Lexmark International *
    * 740 New Circle Rd *
    * Lexington, Ky 40550 *
    * 606-232-4808 (phone) 606-232-6740 (fax) *
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    nschade%xionics.com@interlock.lexmark.com on 02/14/2000 03:32:57 PM

    To: upd%pwg.org@interlock.lexmark.com
    cc: (bcc: Don Wright/Lex/Lexmark)
    Subject: UPD> Unicode support

    It became apparent that we need a unique way of identifying characters when
    dealing with them in different operating systems with different
    configurations.
    The only option coming up was Unicode. It would be used in two areas:
    1. Technical spec of fonts
    Especially the handling of character sets requires a neutral and consistent
    way to identify characters.
    2. Dialogs
    Any Universal Printer Driver will have a dialog. Some other strings like
    font names will even be passed through to applications.
    It would be a huge problem to have different conditions for storing these
    strings based on different operating system character sets.

    While there seemed to be a wide consensus about the use of Unicode to
    accomplish that every company shall have the chance to discuss this
    internally and check current policies.
    It needs a little more investigation to find out about the appropriate
    encoding form. It will most probably be either UTF-8 or UTF-16. When
    searching in the Internet it looks as if UTF-8 is the current leader in
    industry standards. Saving the Unicode in the theoretic default value of
    four bytes is not an option.
    We'll wait til end of March 2000 for statements. After that there will be a
    time to vote on that.

    While chatting around I found a number of XML editors either available or
    under development, which support at least UTF-8. So this should not be a
    problem at all.
    Norbert



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