> >> Taiwanese read traditional chinese characters, but PRC people read
> > >> simplied chinese. Even we take the same data, and same program
(code),
> > >> people just read differently. As an end user, I want to make the
decision.
> > >> It will drive me crazy if Perl render/display the text file using
traditional
> > >> chinese just because it was tagged as "Big5".
> > >
> > >Perl will (probably, whispers he, crossing his fingers) never
> > >translate data that far. Perl (5) does not "display" chr(0x1234) to
> > >me using Unicode fonts, it just pushes the octets to a file
> > >descriptor/handle. Unicode is language-neutral.
> >
> >Perl may not, but I assume someone will be fool enough to give it a GUI.
> >perl5.7.1+/Tk803.???-to-be will now make a stab at rendering Unicode
> >(not a very good one I am the 1st to admit which is why it isn't
released!).
> >
> >It would be good if Tk-for-perl6 did not have to break the rules or
> >provide its own hooks for meta data and could use "the" string API.
>
> What sort of things would Tk need?
Please don't try to dig a hole in my original word. This is just a virtual
example.
I can give you another example. Suppose we have a text file contains some
index (say, file names or user names). The file is tagged as "Big5" (Taiwan
encoding). I want to use a program written in Perl 6 to sort it. If the
final
result is in Taiwan sorting order, it will be completely useless for me.
I want to dictate my locale and want the program follow me, not the Perl 6,
not the application writer, not the data. We could choose to tag the data,
but the end user must have a way to override it somehow.
Hong
