comment on

how about a meditation? ;)

Given the kneejerk responses in this thread, I think that would be pointless.

In a nutshell:

Variable length encoding is a "party trick" that has no place in modern IT.
On disk, standard compression algorithms are far more effective.
In memory, whatever small space savings seemed desirable in 199x; makes no sense when you can get a 64GB DIMM for Ł140.
The penalty for any and every algorithm that slices and dices strings is huge. The inability to directly index into strings screws with every advance searching, sorting and comparison algorithm ever devised.
It is a ridiculous state of affairs that this has been foisted on the world.
When you have a 21-bit codepoint space, it makes no sense whatsoever to jump from 16-bit encoding to 32-bit encoding.
A fixed, 3-byte/24-bit encoding would cover every eventuality. It would allow the representation of every character in indexable strings; and leave space for embedded identification!
No headers.
If I suggested that I would distribute multiple formats of graphics file -- png/jpg/gif/tiff; 2/4/8/24/32 bpp; huffman/RLE/LZW/none; RGB/CMYK/YCbCr etc.-- in headerless files and then suggest that people could use heuristics to try guess what they are; I'd be rightly condemned as crazy.
What the Unicode Consortium has foisted on the world is exactly equivalent.

It exists; and railing against it now is pretty pointless; but I'm at a (apparently enviable) point in my career and life where I do not have to deal with this crock, so I do not.

With the rise and rise of 'Social' network sites: 'Computers are making people easier to use everyday'

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.

"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority". I knew I was on the right track :)

In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.

In reply to Re^5: Encoding Problem - UTF-8 (I think) by BrowserUk
in thread Encoding Problem - UTF-8 (I think) by Melly

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