[pro] [Q] unicode support

[Robert Smith]

I think it might be worthwhile to look at unicode beyond just seeing
if files can encoded as utf8.

The concept of "unicode support" is pretty loaded. What does it mean?
Does unicode support mean that one can operate on strings stored in a
particular fashion? Does it mean functions like LENGTH handle
overlaying characters correctly (e.g., any character plus a circumflex
overlaying character... does that have length 1 or 2?)? Do the
printers support stuff like right-to-left printing?

See http://stackoverflow.com/a/6163129 for details on why unicode
support isn't a simple concept.

Cheers,

Robert Smith

On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 10:54 AM, Faré <fahree at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 3:46 AM, Didier Verna <didier at lrde.epita.fr> wrote:
>> does anyone have a global view on the status of unicode support in the
>> main CL implementations (SBCL, CMU-CL, ECL, CCL, CLISP, ABCL, ACL,
>> LispWorks). By that, I mean mostly being able to encode source files in
>> utf8 with the following concerns:
>>
>> - do I need to do something special at the implementation-level ?
>> - do I need to do something special at the ASDF system level ?
>> - could this break the code of people using my libraries ?
>>
> So far as I can tell, all these implementations support Unicode,
> though some of them can be explicitly compiled without.
>
> ASDF, since release 2.21 (April 2012) supports Unicode.
> The recommended, backwards-compatible, incantation is
> (in your defsystem, or any specific component):
>         #+asdf-unicode :encoding #+asdf-unicode :utf-8.
>
> I have the intention of making utf-8 the default eventually,
> but last we checked (in April this year), that would break
> 7 files out of all of quicklisp,
> the authors of which have never replied regarding fixing them.
>
> Also, if you (asdf:load-system :asdf-encodings) explicitly and early,
> you can use :encoding :latin1, or :encoding euc-jp,
> or whichever encoding your implementation supports
> (asdf-encodings at this time won't transcode things for you).
>
> An example system that explicitly uses this UTF-8 support
> is lambda-reader, which I published earlier this year
> (last edited in April also), based on an initial implementation
> by Brian Mastenbrook.
>
> —♯ƒ • François-René ÐVB Rideau •Reflection&Cybernethics• http://fare.tunes.org
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>
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