RE: [AD] Proposal to kill non-UTF-8 support

[Shawn Hargreaves <shargreaves@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Peter Wang writes:
>> Codepages are such a horrible ugly mess.
>> Maybe the best solution is just to bury your head in the sand
>> and pretend they don't exist?
> 
> I know you're being sarcastic

Sort of half-serious. Practicality and elegance seem to be in
direct opposition here...

A pure Unicode system (or UTF8, which is just a different way to 
represent the same thing) is clearly the Right Thing for any
type of software. The only problem is when you have to talk to
the outside world, which doesn't speak Unicode. A case could
be made that this is the fault of whatever stupid software is 
providing text in locale-specific codepages, and that the other
software is the bit that needs fixing.

Windows already has Unicode versions of the entire API, and 
newer glibcs are getting there.


-- 
Shawn