Re: [boost] MSVC doesn't like some high-ASCII characters on non-US systems

From: Paul Giaccone (paulg_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-04-04 05:28:27

Nigel Stewart wrote:

>>I also think that since Boost supply generic libraries and not specific 
>>GUI, there is no reason for Boost code to go beyond plain low ASCII
>>    
>>
>
>Here is the result of using a Python script to grep for non-ascii
>lines in the boost headers.  (Boost 1.33.0)
>
>The issues mostly revolve around copyright symbols and
>European names.  (How inconvenient for developers to have
>non-ASCII names! :-)
>
>  
>
Here are a few thoughts:

* German ë, ö and ü can be replaced by ae, oe and ue respectively - this 
is standard practice in German.
* é could be replaced by e' (e apostrophe) but this is not very 
satisfactory, and only really works at the end of a word. Such a 
substitution is permissible for replacing accents at the end of Italian 
words.
* Replace each accented letter with its nearest unaccented equivalent: é 
-> e, ä -> a, Å -> A, ç -> c, æ -> ae, ñ -> n, ø -> o, ð -> dh, etc. 
This might not be acceptable to the authors, however, because it could 
end up changing the meaning (and, very likely, the pronunciation) of 
their names. However I'm sure each language must have equivalents (such 
as oe for German ö, etc) when accented characters are not available. The 
Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diacritic might be helpful here.

Paul