Re: M17N

[Jim Blandy <jimb@red-bean.com>]

>  > I dislike the way Emacs handles multi-byte strings, because it seems
>  > to me that it requires every piece of code which wants to manipulate
>  > strings to understand N different character sets.  Any approach to
>  > multi-lingual support should use a single, canonical encoding
>  > throughout the system.
> 
> Won't the GNU Emacs switch to Unicode after 21.0 anyways? 

Is that true?  This is the first I've heard of it.  I'd consider that
a rumor until someone shows me a post from Stallman saying it's so.


>  > My favorite candidate for that single, canonical encoding is UTF-8,
>  > and Unicode.  I realize Unicode is unpopular in Japan, but I've never
>  > been given any convincing explanation for this.
> 
> Would it make sense to provide some lib-copylefted portable unicode
> lib, as part of or separated from GNU libc, so that the many
> languages that have free implementations don't have to reinvent it
> each time and bloat on the way, once they start to support unicode?

Sure, once there is some kind of de facto consensus on what such a
library should do.