[pro] CDR for UTF* and UNICODE handling in :element-type (Re: write-char vs. 8-bit bytes)

[Antoniotti Marco]

On 2014-04-11, 22:57 , "Faré" <fahree at gmail.com> wrote:

>On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 4:32 PM, Antoniotti Marco
><antoniotti.marco at disco.unimib.it> wrote:
>> I understand that my original message was not on spot.  In fact I
>>changed the subject line in my responseŠ  The issue, in any case,
>>appears to be the handling of characters nevertheless.  Maybe Paul can
>>clarify what he was really trying to do.
>>
>> In any caseŠ I am the only person who thinks that a ³sub-standard² on
>>these issues may be a Good Thing?
>>
>For basic survival, ASDF since 2.21 has support for encodings, and
>asdf::*utf-8-external-format* (now exported by uiop) will let you
>portably handle utf-8 streams (falling back to :default on 8-bit
>implementations). UCS-2 and UTF-16 are not universally supported, but
>asdf-encodings can help you find your implementation's external-format
>for them if available. Or for portable behavior reimplementing things
>the hard way, you could use either cl-unicode and flexi-streams, or
>babel and streams of (unsigned-byte 8).

I am aware of all the things ³out there², and yet, having a number of
libraries or even a single library is not the same as ³having a standard².

>If you can't convince the community to choose between babel and
>cl-unicode and whichever other alternatives may exist, what makes you
>think you can get yet another incompatible standard widely adopted?
>https://xkcd.com/927/

I am not advocating the proverbial 15th incompatible standard.  Since by
now people should know what they are doing, it would be nicer to have a
document that summarized things up.  Didn¹t the ANSI spec essentially came
about in that way?

>PS: all implementations that accept unicode accept :external-format
>:utf-8... except clisp, that requires you to use 'charset:utf-8. If
>you want to work towards a common external-format, start here

I said ³any takers?².  I am just the customer telling the market what it
would be nice to have :) and that is the reason why I will not build the
15th ³standard² (or the next library external encoding library).  The
question I am posing to the authors of the libraries you mentioned is why
they don¹t sit down and write such a summary collaborative document and
agree on a common interface.  Of course the usual responses may be put
forth (time, money or both) so my request may be moot.  I am aware of
that.  And yet, why not asking?

Cheers
‹
MA

P.S. Networking anybody?  Multiprocessing?