Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > comp.lang.java.programmer > #25532 > unrolled thread

Re: Why No Supplemental Characters In Character Literals?

Back to article view | Back to comp.lang.java.programmer

This discussion starts older than the indexed window; earlier articles aren't shown. The article labeled Started by below is the oldest one visible, not the original post.

Contents

  Re: Why No Supplemental Characters In Character Literals? Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@geek-central.gen.new_zealand> - 2011-02-05 11:45 +1300
    Re: Why No Supplemental Characters In Character Literals? Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2011-02-06 15:38 -0500
    Re: Why No Supplemental Characters In Character Literals? "javax.swing.JSnarker" <gharriman@boojum.mit.edu> - 2011-02-05 12:59 -0500
    Re: Why No Supplemental Characters In Character Literals? Tom Anderson <twic@urchin.earth.li> - 2011-02-06 15:42 +0000
      Re: Why No Supplemental Characters In Character Literals? Tom Anderson <twic@urchin.earth.li> - 2011-02-06 18:34 +0000
      Re: Why No Supplemental Characters In Character Literals? Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2011-02-06 11:02 -0500
    Re: Why No Supplemental Characters In Character Literals? Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2011-02-04 18:17 -0500
      Re: Why No Supplemental Characters In Character Literals? Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2011-02-09 20:12 -0500
      Re: Why No Supplemental Characters In Character Literals? Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@geek-central.gen.new_zealand> - 2011-02-10 14:00 +1300
    Re: Why No Supplemental Characters In Character Literals? Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@geek-central.gen.new_zealand> - 2011-02-05 12:54 +1300
      Re: Why No Supplemental Characters In Character Literals? Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2011-02-05 13:09 +0000
    Re: Why No Supplemental Characters In Character Literals? Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2011-02-04 15:29 -0800

#25532 — Re: Why No Supplemental Characters In Character Literals?

In message <ejeok6d6v98ju1tpqt5cq3vhko813q4def@4ax.com>, Roedy Green wrote:

> Personally, I don’t see the point of any great rush to support 32-bit
> Unicode. ... The rest I can’t imagine ever using unless I took up a career
> in anthropology ...

But you, or another programmer, might work for an anthropologist. The 
computer is a universal machine, after all. If a programming language can’t 
support that universality, what good is it?

[toc] | [next] | [standalone]

#25557

On 06-02-2011 13:34, Tom Anderson wrote:
> On Sun, 6 Feb 2011, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 06-02-2011 10:42, Tom Anderson wrote:
>>> On Sat, 5 Feb 2011, Mike Schilling wrote:
>>>> "Lawrence D'Oliveiro" <ldo@geek-central.gen.new_zealand> wrote in
>>>> message news:iil0uf$niu$4@lust.ihug.co.nz...
>>>>> In message <iiji77$4fe$1@localhost.localdomain>, Martin Gregorie
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Arabic Letters also have different glyphs depending on whether
>>>>>> they are at the start, middle or end of a word or an isolated
>>>>>> letter, though six letters only have isolated and end-of-word
>>>>>> representations. Unicode supports this with a code point for each
>>>>>> representation of each letter.
>>>>>
>>>>> But they are not different characters, they should not have
>>>>> different code points.
>>>>>
>>>>> Assigning different code points greatly complicates basic
>>>>> text-processing tasks like editing and searching.
>>>>
>>>> Different code point for capitals and lower-case letters is equally
>>>> silly.
>>>
>>> Agreed. Uppercase should be a combiner, like an accent. There could be
>>> composed forms of uppercase letters, but there should be a modifier too,
>>> so that when normalised in the right direction, searching and sorting
>>> are simplified.
>>
>> It would make some things a lot easier. But guess the idea
>> is 40-50 years late.
>
> For interchange purposes, yes. But i don't see why you couldn't write a
> string implementation that stored characters this way internally.

24 bit for values and 8 bit for modifiers.

I guess it could be done.

Arne

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#25698

On 05/02/2011 8:09 AM, Martin Gregorie wrote:
> On Sat, 05 Feb 2011 12:54:06 +1300, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> And Arabic script was adopted by a whole lot of different languages
>> which had sounds that Arabic did not. So they had to make up their own
>> letters, most commonly by adding different numbers of dots to the
>> existing shapes.
>>
> Arabic Letters also have different glyphs depending on whether they are
> at the start, middle or end of a word or an isolated letter, though six
> letters only have isolated and end-of-word representations. Unicode
> supports this with a code point for each representation of each letter.

The Arabic I've seen has always looked like it's in something of a 
cursive style, so this may be because each letter may have a connection 
to the previous, the next, both, or neither. The four variants probably 
look similar to one another except for these connections, then.

The six letters with only two representations are interesting in that 
light. Are they not valid letters in any other position in a word than 
as last character then? Are they tags that modify a word, say, to give 
it a gender or make it plural? Or something else?

-- 
In <iijn58$ccs$1@news.albasani.net>, Lew admitted:
 > The JLS is obfuscatory in parts

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#25781

On Sat, 5 Feb 2011, Mike Schilling wrote:

> "Lawrence D'Oliveiro" <ldo@geek-central.gen.new_zealand> wrote in message 
> news:iil0uf$niu$4@lust.ihug.co.nz...
>> In message <iiji77$4fe$1@localhost.localdomain>, Martin Gregorie wrote:
>> 
>>> Arabic Letters also have different glyphs depending on whether they are
>>> at the start, middle or end of a word or an isolated letter, though six
>>> letters only have isolated and end-of-word representations. Unicode
>>> supports this with a code point for each representation of each letter.
>> 
>> But they are not different characters, they should not have different code
>> points.
>> 
>> Assigning different code points greatly complicates basic text-processing
>> tasks like editing and searching.
>
> Different code point for capitals and lower-case letters is equally silly.

Agreed. Uppercase should be a combiner, like an accent. There could be 
composed forms of uppercase letters, but there should be a modifier too, 
so that when normalised in the right direction, searching and sorting are 
simplified.

tom

-- 
Demolish serious culture!

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#25957

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

On Sun, 6 Feb 2011, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

> On 06-02-2011 10:42, Tom Anderson wrote:
>> On Sat, 5 Feb 2011, Mike Schilling wrote:
>>> "Lawrence D'Oliveiro" <ldo@geek-central.gen.new_zealand> wrote in
>>> message news:iil0uf$niu$4@lust.ihug.co.nz...
>>>> In message <iiji77$4fe$1@localhost.localdomain>, Martin Gregorie wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> Arabic Letters also have different glyphs depending on whether they 
>>>>> are at the start, middle or end of a word or an isolated letter, 
>>>>> though six letters only have isolated and end-of-word 
>>>>> representations. Unicode supports this with a code point for each 
>>>>> representation of each letter.
>>>> 
>>>> But they are not different characters, they should not have different 
>>>> code points.
>>>> 
>>>> Assigning different code points greatly complicates basic 
>>>> text-processing tasks like editing and searching.
>>> 
>>> Different code point for capitals and lower-case letters is equally
>>> silly.
>> 
>> Agreed. Uppercase should be a combiner, like an accent. There could be
>> composed forms of uppercase letters, but there should be a modifier too,
>> so that when normalised in the right direction, searching and sorting
>> are simplified.
>
> It would make some things a lot easier. But guess the idea
> is 40-50 years late.

For interchange purposes, yes. But i don't see why you couldn't write a 
string implementation that stored characters this way internally.

tom

-- 
peason pla me his oasis rekords it rappidly become klere that like
history oasis started badley and got steaddily WORSE -- Nigel Molesworth

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#26166

On 06-02-2011 10:42, Tom Anderson wrote:
> On Sat, 5 Feb 2011, Mike Schilling wrote:
>> "Lawrence D'Oliveiro" <ldo@geek-central.gen.new_zealand> wrote in
>> message news:iil0uf$niu$4@lust.ihug.co.nz...
>>> In message <iiji77$4fe$1@localhost.localdomain>, Martin Gregorie wrote:
>>>
>>>> Arabic Letters also have different glyphs depending on whether they are
>>>> at the start, middle or end of a word or an isolated letter, though six
>>>> letters only have isolated and end-of-word representations. Unicode
>>>> supports this with a code point for each representation of each letter.
>>>
>>> But they are not different characters, they should not have different
>>> code
>>> points.
>>>
>>> Assigning different code points greatly complicates basic
>>> text-processing
>>> tasks like editing and searching.
>>
>> Different code point for capitals and lower-case letters is equally
>> silly.
>
> Agreed. Uppercase should be a combiner, like an accent. There could be
> composed forms of uppercase letters, but there should be a modifier too,
> so that when normalised in the right direction, searching and sorting
> are simplified.

It would make some things a lot easier. But guess the idea
is 40-50 years late.

Arne

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#25783

On 04-02-2011 17:45, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> In message<ejeok6d6v98ju1tpqt5cq3vhko813q4def@4ax.com>, Roedy Green wrote:
>> Personally, I don’t see the point of any great rush to support 32-bit
>> Unicode. ... The rest I can’t imagine ever using unless I took up a career
>> in anthropology ...
>
> But you, or another programmer, might work for an anthropologist. The
> computer is a universal machine, after all. If a programming language can’t
> support that universality, what good is it?

The idea that a single programming language needs to support
everything is not a good one.

Maybe Java is just not the right language for anthropology.

If they had new that Unicode would go beyond 64K, then they
probably would have come up with a different solution.

But they did not.

And we live it it.

Arne

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#25793

On 09-02-2011 20:00, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> In message<4d4c88f3$0$23753$14726298@news.sunsite.dk>, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 04-02-2011 17:45, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>> In message<ejeok6d6v98ju1tpqt5cq3vhko813q4def@4ax.com>, Roedy Green
>>> wrote:
>>>> Personally, I don’t see the point of any great rush to support 32-bit
>>>> Unicode. ... The rest I can’t imagine ever using unless I took up a
>>>> career in anthropology ...
>>>
>>> But you, or another programmer, might work for an anthropologist. The
>>> computer is a universal machine, after all. If a programming language
>>> can’t support that universality, what good is it?
>>
>> The idea that a single programming language needs to support
>> everything is not a good one.
>
> But if it’s going to support text processing, then it should support what is
> commonly accepted as the minimum requirements for that area. The incremental
> cost of adding lesser-used language scripts on top of the more common ones
> is so low, it seems entirely reasonable to insist that you should at least
> have provision for dealing with them all.

That seems as an obvious good idea.

But none of the common languages for text processing apps
does, so ...

And it is not clear that it is a big problem in practice.

Arne

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#26182

In message <4d4c88f3$0$23753$14726298@news.sunsite.dk>, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

> On 04-02-2011 17:45, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> In message<ejeok6d6v98ju1tpqt5cq3vhko813q4def@4ax.com>, Roedy Green
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Personally, I don’t see the point of any great rush to support 32-bit
>>> Unicode. ... The rest I can’t imagine ever using unless I took up a
>>> career in anthropology ...
>>
>> But you, or another programmer, might work for an anthropologist. The
>> computer is a universal machine, after all. If a programming language
>> can’t support that universality, what good is it?
> 
> The idea that a single programming language needs to support
> everything is not a good one.

But if it’s going to support text processing, then it should support what is 
commonly accepted as the minimum requirements for that area. The incremental 
cost of adding lesser-used language scripts on top of the more common ones 
is so low, it seems entirely reasonable to insist that you should at least 
have provision for dealing with them all.

> If they had new that Unicode would go beyond 64K, then they
> probably would have come up with a different solution.

The problem, I think, is that they embraced Unicode before it had properly 
stabilized.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#25944

In message <tk2pk6d1m27fop2cr94sbe4hn9c0io44je@4ax.com>, Roedy Green wrote:

> I get a strange pleasure out of poking around the odd corners of the
> Unicode glyphs ...

You’re not the only one. :)

> ... just admiring the art of various cultures in designing their
> alphabets, often baffled which they would design so many letters
> almost identical.

There seem to be an awful lot of cases of adapting a letter from one 
alphabet for a completely different purpose in another. Look at the 
correspondences between Cyrillic and Roman, just for example: V → B, S → C, 
that kind of thing.

> The glyphs that fascinate me most are Arabic which look to have rules of
> typography that boggle the western mind.

And Arabic script was adopted by a whole lot of different languages which 
had sounds that Arabic did not. So they had to make up their own letters, 
most commonly by adding different numbers of dots to the existing shapes.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#26170

On Sat, 05 Feb 2011 12:54:06 +1300, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> And Arabic script was adopted by a whole lot of different languages
> which had sounds that Arabic did not. So they had to make up their own
> letters, most commonly by adding different numbers of dots to the
> existing shapes.
>
Arabic Letters also have different glyphs depending on whether they are 
at the start, middle or end of a word or an isolated letter, though six 
letters only have isolated and end-of-word representations. Unicode 
supports this with a code point for each representation of each letter.


-- 
martin@   | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org       |

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#26130

On Sat, 05 Feb 2011 11:45:18 +1300, Lawrence D'Oliveiro
<ldo@geek-central.gen.new_zealand> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted
someone who said :

>But you, or another programmer, might work for an anthropologist. The 
>computer is a universal machine, after all. If a programming language can’t 
>support that universality, what good is it?

Of course, It is just PERSONALLY I am not likely to use many of these
character sets. They are not important for business, so I doubt Oracle
puts support for them a high priority.

I get a strange pleasure out of poking around the odd corners of the
Unicode glyphs, just admiring the art of various cultures in designing
their alphabets, often baffled which they would design so many letters
almost identical. I'd love to have an excuse to paint with these
glyphs. The glyphs that fascinate me most are Arabic which look to
have rules of typography that boggle the western mind.


-- 
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
http://mindprod.com
To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.
~ Farmer's Almanac
It is breathtaking how a misplaced comma in a computer program can
shred megabytes of data in seconds.

[toc] | [prev] | [standalone]

Back to top | Article view | comp.lang.java.programmer

csiph-web