On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 11:43 AM, Martín Vales <mar...@opengeomap.org> wrote: > > Other overhead i see is the open dir/file funtions, where in windows we need > do the utf8 to utf16 everytime in windows. If JAVA,.NET and Qt use utf16 by > default why in gnome world we use utf8 by default?.
Historically, Unix was a late adopter of Unicode. And crucially, the Unicode designers originally thought 16 bits would be enough. So Java was explicitly designed around Unicode and specifically UTF-16, and Windows was a relatively early adopter. Only later did it became clear that more code point space was needed, and also that UTF-8 specifically had a number of advantages. Strings and encodings are actually a pretty interesting subject I think, and for any programmer it's worth taking some time to read available material on the web at least. _______________________________________________ gtk-app-devel-list mailing list gtk-app-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-app-devel-list
