> On 25 Nov 2014, at 11:20, Alain Williams <a...@phcomp.co.uk> wrote:
>
> I think that we need to clarify what we are talking about.
>
> What Andrea has proposed is a way of writing string constants. These
> characters
> in these strings will still be 8 bits big, this means that there needs to be
> some way of encoding characters with code points that will not fit in 8 bits.
> The only way of avoiding that would be to use, internally, 32 bit characters
> --
> which would be a huge change.
>
> So: we need to have some form of encoding.
>
> As I started ''a way of writing string constants'' - ie a *compile* time
> action.
>
> With the code below it is likely that at *run-time* mb_internal_encoding() has
> been called before the echo is executed or the 'Content-Type:' header
> specifies
> some encoding.
>
>> echo "mañana \u{1F602}"; // won't output anything useful if script
>> encoding is not UTF-8
>
> This is not something that the compiler can guess.
Well, we *do* already have a compile-time system for declaring encoding, the
declare() construct.
> It is even worse if my proposal of \U{arabic letter alef} types is added, how
> is
> that encoded ? UTF-8 or iso-8859-6 or .... ?
>
> So, how do we fix the problem ?
>
> * mb_internal_encoding($new_encoding) finds every string (variable and
> constant)
> and converts from the previous encoding to the $new_encoding.
>
> Possible, but horribly slow and would prob break things (eg strings that
> contain binary data).
>
> Not a good idea.
I also agree this isn’t a good idea.
> * Decide that UTF-8 is king.
> That is what I have decided - but I do not have any legacy code to worry
> about
> -- being a Brit I don't have to worry much.
>
> * Rely on the programmer to understand encoding and know what the eventual
> output encoding will be and if it is not UTF-8 write characters using \Xxx or
> use mb_convert_encoding($string, $output_encoding, 'utf-8').
>
> If we decide to support non-utf-8 encoding at compile time then we could
> extend
> the syntax a bit to allow the encoding to be specified, eg:
>
> \U{utf-8: arabic letter alef}
>
> \U{iso-8859-6: arabic letter alef}
>
> Ie, allow this to be optionally specified and terminated by ':'. If not
> specified then assume utf-8.
There are only two sane options:
* Always UTF-8
* Whatever source file encoding we’ve specified with declare()
Of those, I’d prefer UTF-8, as nobody’s using UTF-16 or UTF-32.
--
Andrea Faulds
http://ajf.me/
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