[boost] Re: Boost Unicode support ideas

From: Miro Jurisic (macdev_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-04-13 16:16:43

In article <87isg3skr6.fsf_at_[hidden]>, Jeremy Maitin-Shepard <jbms_at_[hidden]> 
wrote:

> Right, it will certainly be necessary to provide a grapheme_cluster_iterator 
> (with value_type = the Unicode string type).  ICU should help with this.  

You are conflating abstract characters (which exist in absence of a graphical 
representation) and graphemes (whose existence is dependent upon the graphical 
representation), but I believe we are talking about the same thing.

> Nonetheless, it is useful to represent a single code point, for several 
> reasons:

I agree; as I mentioned elsewhere, I believe that the Unicode string abstraction 
needs to support at least iteration by abstract characters, encoded characters, 
and encoding units.

>  - For the purpose of string construction, the Unicode specification
>    explicitly states that any sequence of code points is well formed, and so 
>    this provides the smallest unit by which guaranteed-well-formed strings 
>    can be formed.

Can you refer me to a specific point in the spec where this is stated?

>  - It would be useful to provide functions for querying the Unicode
>    properties of individual code points, and this code_point type would be 
>    the only suitable parameter type.

Absolutely.

> I do agree, however, that for almost any output formatting, the 
> locale-specific or user-specified fill text/symbols should be specified as 
> strings, rather than as individual characters.

Yes.

meeroh

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