From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Sep 9 23:08:46 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 438AF106567A for ; Tue, 9 Sep 2008 23:08:46 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kline@thought.org) Received: from aristotle.thought.org (ns1.thought.org [209.180.213.210]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DA36C8FC18 for ; Tue, 9 Sep 2008 23:08:45 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kline@thought.org) Received: from thought.org (tao.thought.org [10.47.0.250]) (authenticated bits=0) by aristotle.thought.org (8.14.2/8.14.2) with ESMTP id m89N8q90053697; Tue, 9 Sep 2008 16:08:52 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from kline@thought.org) Received: by thought.org (nbSMTP-1.00) for uid 1002 kline@thought.org; Tue, 9 Sep 2008 16:08:40 -0700 (PDT) Date: Tue, 9 Sep 2008 16:08:40 -0700 From: Gary Kline To: Roland Smith Message-ID: <20080909230840.GB54455@thought.org> References: <20080909043503.GA21663@thought.org> <20080909165456.GA56556@slackbox.xs4all.nl> <20080909121430.M12798@qroenaqrq.6qbyyneqvnyhc.pbz> <20080909221608.GB51272@thought.org> <20080909223941.GC65291@slackbox.xs4all.nl> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20080909223941.GC65291@slackbox.xs4all.nl> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.3i X-Organization: Thought Unlimited. Public service Unix since 1986. X-Of_Interest: With 22 years of service to the Unix community. X-Spam-Status: No, score=-4.4 required=3.6 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.2.3 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.2.3 (2007-08-08) on aristotle.thought.org Cc: FreeBSD Mailing List Subject: Re: how can i use ISO-8859-1?? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 09 Sep 2008 23:08:46 -0000 On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 12:39:41AM +0200, Roland Smith wrote: > On Tue, Sep 09, 2008 at 03:16:08PM -0700, Gary Kline wrote: > > > Because it is a hiddeous waste for most readers and writers of > > > English and other European languages. > > > I also argured that utf-8 was a waste of a whole byte per char > > for most of us. > > That's not true. UTF-8 is a variable-length encoding. It is backwards > compatible with ASCII, i.e. ascii characters are one byte in UTF-8 as > well. Are you thinking about UTF-16? I don't know. (Mark Twain.) Back in the late 1990's I was assigned the project of converting all the utilities I had ported to three European languages. Until now I had no idea there was anything *but* utf-16, i.e. 2-bytes/char. With memory seriously getting to be dirt-cheap, "wasting 8-bits doesn't seem that big a deal. Maybe some future wizard will invent a UTF-32 that will hold all ~90 000 Chinese characters and these will be downsized automatically to UTF-8 when you're mixing Mandarin with, say, Cesk [Czeck]. Hmm, somebody just told me that "aigu" is not English but French and means "acute". ...all these years i thought ... oh well. Anyway, do you know if '\0351' is a 16-bit character? is is 0xE9 and decimal 233 and certaing should fit into a byte. just wondering. gary > > Roland > -- > R.F.Smith http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/ > [plain text _non-HTML_ PGP/GnuPG encrypted/signed email much appreciated] > pgp: 1A2B 477F 9970 BA3C 2914 B7CE 1277 EFB0 C321 A725 (KeyID: C321A725) -- Gary Kline kline@thought.org http://www.thought.org Public Service Unix http://jottings.thought.org http://transfinite.thought.org