This page is part of the web mail archives of SRFI 56 from before July 7th, 2015. The new archives for SRFI 56 contain all messages, not just those from before July 7th, 2015.
Hans Oesterholt-Dijkema wrote:
I think, one should not interfere with the creative process of software engineers by limiting the possibilities of the language at hand.
I get nervous when I hear about the "creative process of software engineers".
2. In the protocol of many instant messengers, both text and binary protocols are mixed. To communicate a ZIP file, binary protocol is used, to communicate (meta) information, text protocol is used.
Well, yes. The points I'm making are: * One layers text i/o on top of binary i/o. * A SRFI for binary i/o has to specify how to open a file in "binary mode". * Portable programs cannot assume they can do binary i/o on ports opened in the default character mode, unless we make unreasonable demands on implementors. * Reading/writing characters/strings from/to character mode ports is tricky. * Most file formats that mix text and binary i/o do *not* handle general strings: often they only support whatever character encoding the "creative" engineers are most familiar with. * I/O APIs designed by people unfamiliar with internationalization issues often have problems in today's internationalized world. * A quick-and-dirty fix is often to specify that strings are in UTF8. -- --Per Bothner per@xxxxxxxxxxx http://per.bothner.com/