[boost] Re: Unicode string

From: Vladimir Prus (ghost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-04-07 05:10:00

Hi Miro,

>> You almost caugth me ;-) I've changed the message subject on purpose --
>> to indicate that I'm not longer talking about program_options.
>> I'm interested how 'right' unicode string can be implemented, but I don't
>> think sure it's possible to design such a string now, so program_options
>> will still have to use much simpler approach.
> 
> I am somewhat reluctant to discuss this in detail at this time, not
> because I have something to hide, but because I have something to learn: I
> need to investigate some aspect of Unicode, the ICU library, and locales
> and facets in the C++ standard before I can form a more complete picture
> of the design of a Unicode string. However, I don't have the time to do
> all the research right now, because there are other things I need to do
> that I am getting paid to do, and full Unicode support is not on my work
> too list. 

That's what I think too. There's too many unicode issue and too little time.

>Basically, I know enough to know how _not_ to do it, but I am
> not sure that I know enough to know how to do it right :-)
> 
> However, I currently think that there are legitimate reasons why one would
> want to view a Unicode string as (in increasing order of complexity):
> 
>  - a sequence of code points (this is useful for serialization)
>  - a sequence of encoded characters (this is useful for transcoding)
>  - a sequence of abstract characters (this is useful for most high-level
>  string
> transformations, such as substrings, find, etc.)
> 
> Therefore I think that a Unicode string should probably not be represented
> as a container of any one of those three, but instead should have an
> interface that lets you treat it in different ways depending on your
> needs. (One way to do this is to have three kinds of iterators for Unicode
> strings).

This seems reasonable. Hopefully one day someone will take the time to
really think though all the issues and implement something.

- Volodya