Re: [boost] Re: formatting manipulator for UTF-8

From: Beman Dawes (beman_at_[hidden])
Date: 2000-08-22 14:19:13

Karl Nelson wrote:

 >There are actually 3 different proposals.  Here is a rundown.
 >
 > ...

Thanks Karl, that was very helpful.

 > ...
 >
 >Okay that about wraps up the summary.  Clearly having a
 >format command in boost is a good idea,

Yes, agreed.

 > but the implementation
 >has a rather large design area.
 >
 >Things to be decided like
 >
 >       stream/manipulator like   verses   function like

I vote for stream/manipulator like.  Seems more in the spirit of iostreams, 
and that is the familiar model for C++ programmers.

 >  Unix 98 printf specification   verses   creating our own format

I'd rather stick with a familiar format, unless we find so many small 
deviations that it becomes a different thing.  If that happens, it might be 
less confusing to use an entirely different format.  But it seems better to 
me to strive for C/C++ printf compatibility.  (I'm not familiar with the 
Unxi 98 spec; boost usually tries to tie such things to the ISO C++ 
standard.)

 >       simple positional         verses   handles formating
 >       full charT                verses  just a ostream and wostream
 >version

I'm not sure yet about these.

There is clearly lots of boost interest in your work.   Now that you know 
our concerns, one way to proceed would be to go off-line, and develop a 
final proposal.  Since Dave Abrahams issued the "Basic I/O" challenge, you 
might try using him as a sounding board along the way.  Of course you are 
welcome to just keep thrashing things out on the full list, too.

--Beman