[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: the "Unicode Background" section

This page is part of the web mail archives of SRFI 75 from before July 7th, 2015. The new archives for SRFI 75 contain all messages, not just those from before July 7th, 2015.



bear writes:
> I want to know something: what does a string containing an
> unpaired surrogate mean?  What is represented by it?  How
> can anything handle it sensibly in rendering or reading or
> writing?

An unpaired surrogate can be displayed with whatever the local
"unrenderable" character is. A string containing an unpaired surrogate
has a localized error in it.

Surrogates should never appear (IMHO) in high-level (i.e.,
non-transcoding) code except in cases abuse, as you point out.

> So I don't regard it as being at all important, or even
> appropriate, to allow unpaired surrogates in strings.

It doesn't strike me as at all important, FWIW, to spend any effort
explicitly enforcing a requirement that a string not contain
surrogates. They are designed, after all, to "just work" in
implementations that are not surrogate aware.

-- 
Tom Emerson                                          Basis Technology Corp.
Software Architect                                 http://www.basistech.com
  "Beware the lollipop of mediocrity: lick it once and you suck forever"