Ron House wrote:
> P.J. Plauger wrote:

> > I see uses for a whole collection of Unicode encodings, so I
> > think the C and C++ Standards got it right in decoupling
> > encodings from their respective languages. But you then need
> > an add-on library to finish the job. (See, for example, our
> > CoreX library.)

> In what way is this not the same stance that was taken by the
> designers of Algol 60 re I-O, and which arguably resulted in
> the demise of Algol?

It depends.  I don't think that there is anything that is
"gotten right" for all eternity.  When C was being standardized,
the decision to leave character encoding fully implementation
defined (with the exception that '0'...'9' must occupy
successive code points) was certainly right.  Hopefully there
will come a time when the question becomes moot, and we can just
say that everything is Unicode (but I'm not holding my breath --
I don't expect to see it in my lifetime).

Today, I still see a definite role for many different code
sets.  I think that Unicode is established itself enough that it
would be justified having some official support for it.  But
that support really can't be required, since there are still
environments where Unicode isn't supported.  And that support
shouldn't replace the current status, but rather complement it.

--
James Kanze                                           GABI Software
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