Re: compiler for Chinese development language

"Oliver Wong" <owong@castortech.com>
26 Oct 2005 14:28:20 -0400

          From comp.compilers

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[18 earlier articles]
Re: compiler for Chinese development language henry@spsystems.net (2005-10-20)
Re: compiler for Chinese development language marcov@stack.nl (Marco van de Voort) (2005-10-22)
Re: compiler for Chinese development language DrDiettrich@compuserve.de (Hans-Peter Diettrich) (2005-10-23)
Re: compiler for Chinese development language DrDiettrich@compuserve.de (Hans-Peter Diettrich) (2005-10-23)
Re: compiler for Chinese development language Robert@Knighten.org (Robert Knighten) (2005-10-26)
Re: compiler for Chinese development language nmh@t3x.org (Nils M Holm) (2005-10-26)
Re: compiler for Chinese development language owong@castortech.com (Oliver Wong) (2005-10-26)
Re: compiler for Chinese development language owong@castortech.com (Oliver Wong) (2005-10-26)
Re: compiler for Chinese development language henry@spsystems.net (2005-10-27)
Re: compiler for Chinese development language henry@spsystems.net (2005-10-27)
Re: compiler for Chinese development language gah@ugcs.caltech.edu (glen herrmannsfeldt) (2005-10-28)
Re: compiler for Chinese development language choudhary@indicybers.net (Abhishek Choudhary) (2006-01-12)
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From: "Oliver Wong" <owong@castortech.com>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: 26 Oct 2005 14:28:20 -0400
Organization: GlobeTrotter
References: 05-10-08505-10-096 05-10-107 05-10-119 05-10-145
Keywords: i18n
Posted-Date: 26 Oct 2005 14:28:20 EDT

"Hans-Peter Diettrich" <DrDiettrich@compuserve.de> wrote
> Oliver Wong wrote:
>
>> Plus support for ASCII is
>> a lot more widespread than support for Unicode, so if you want to play
>> it safe, you'll stick with ASCII characters for your keywords.
>
> Wouldn't it just be an argument for wider use of Unicode, so that
> keywords can be defined as specific code points (or units?), whose
> visual representation can vary depending on the context, like the
> preferred language of the user?


        No, I don't think so. I'm all for Unicode (I'm a Java programmer,
after all), but I know that if I want my documents to reach the
largest possible argument, I usually have to cater to the lowest
common denominator (which in this case means ASCII).


        I have MP3s of songs in Japanese, for example, but some of my MP3
manipulation tools (e.g. WinAmp, Tag&Rename, etc.) don't have Unicode
support, so I cannot have Japanese characters appearing in the
filename of the ID3 tag. I'd like to, but I can't, less I sacrifice
the usability of all these tools.


        By the same token, it'd be nice if you could use the full set of
Unicode characters for the keywords in a language of your design, but
doing so may mean eliminating the possibility of using certain tools
that aren't Unicode aware.


        For example, I am working on a programming language in which the
division operation is represented by the unicode character U+00F7
instead of the traditional slash character. I don't expect this
language to ever become anything more than a toy language, though,
because of the inconvenience of actually entering in the U+00F7
character.


        - Oliver


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