Re: unicode char ranges

[David Given <dg@...>]

On 06/12/12 19:22, Jay Carlson wrote:
> On Dec 6, 2012, at 12:12 AM, Dirk Laurie wrote:
[...]
>> You're the second poster to make snide remarks at my OS.
[...]
> To be clear, I'm self-deprecatingly placing myself in the role of "one of those condescending Unix users!" in the Dilbert strip.

For reference: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-06-24/

(Good grief. 1995!)

Incidentally, what *is* the OS in question? The reason I ask is that I
was under the impression there were only four main Unicode renderers in
current use --- Windows' one, OSX's one, KDE's one, and Pango, which is
the one used by pretty much everything else. Is there a fifth?

(Unicode is stunningly hard to get right. Most software doesn't get it
right[1]. WordGrinder, which I wrote largely as an exercise in doing
Unicode right, doesn't even try to get it right. (It ignores combining
characters and RTL completely.) Because it's so hard to get right most
people who *need* to get it right use somebody else's library to do the
heavy lifting. I'm interested to know of any other Unicode libraries I
haven't come across.)


[1] Lua's approach of not trying to get it right and deliberately
ignoring the problem entirely does at least mean that it doesn't get it
*wrong* --- and this is a much more valuable feature than you might
think. I'd rather go Lua's route when it comes to Unicode than, say,
Java's.[2]

[2] Ask me about Java and Unicode! Go on, I dare you!

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