D - drop ASCII characters from D?
- J. Daniel Smith (20/20) Apr 05 2002 Walter's comment in the "Delegates" thread about the code
- Pavel Minayev (17/34) Apr 05 2002 character
- J. Daniel Smith (21/59) Apr 05 2002 Today there are still a lot of Win9x/WinME boxes out there, but that's n...
- roland (4/76) Apr 05 2002 how is linux concerning caractere size ?
- Walter (5/7) Apr 05 2002 Linux uses 4 byte wchars. This uses up memory real fast. Unicode may be ...
- OddesE (28/35) Apr 06 2002 the
- Walter (11/30) Apr 06 2002 It still is a concern. I have an app on linux with wchars, and it still ...
- J. Daniel Smith (11/18) Apr 08 2002 So what about my suggestion of making ASCII a bit more difficult to use ...
- Walter (9/16) Apr 08 2002 There is no default char type in D. char is ascii, wchar is unicode. The
- J. Daniel Smith (25/41) Apr 09 2002 But then aren't we full-circle back to
- Walter (4/10) Apr 09 2002 Yes, but that doesn't in any way impede a programmer who wants to write ...
- Pavel Minayev (6/7) Apr 05 2002 Unicode is not necessary future. Not in the few next years,
Walter's comment in the "Delegates" thread about the code
void foo(char[]);
void foo(wchar[]);
...
foo("hello");
being ambiguous made me wonder about the point of supporting ASCII
characters in the first place.
Why not drop "wchar" and make "char" always means a 2-byte UNICODE character
(or even a 4-byte ISO10646 character). With the release of Windows XP last
fall, the need for ASCII support is going to diminish as WinXP replaces
Win98/WinME.
If you really need a single byte character to interface with legacy APIs,
use "ubyte" (or "ulong" for "wchar_t" APIs on *IX) convert to/from "char" as
needed. Yea, that makes such code more difficult, but it should all be
burried in some class anyway.
It seems that supporting both in D goes against current trends (Java, VB and
ASCII which is a decision that is usually regretted in many real-world
applications.
Dan
Apr 05 2002
"J. Daniel Smith" <j_daniel_smith HoTMaiL.com> wrote in message news:a8kprh$4h2$1 digitaldaemon.com...Walter's comment in the "Delegates" thread about the code void foo(char[]); void foo(wchar[]); ... foo("hello"); being ambiguous made me wonder about the point of supporting ASCII characters in the first place. Why not drop "wchar" and make "char" always means a 2-byte UNICODEcharacter(or even a 4-byte ISO10646 character). With the release of Windows XPlastfall, the need for ASCII support is going to diminish as WinXP replaces Win98/WinME.I believe no more than 10% of my friends have WinNT, 2K or XP. Your suggestion would make it very hard to write programs that run on 9x series, which is still most popular.If you really need a single byte character to interface with legacy APIs, use "ubyte" (or "ulong" for "wchar_t" APIs on *IX) convert to/from "char"asneeded. Yea, that makes such code more difficult, but it should all be burried in some class anyway.You can convert a single char; but what about strings? D doesn't convert arrays, AFAIK...It seems that supporting both in D goes against current trends (Java, VBandof VB is bloated, partially because of UNICODE-only strings. Java is platform-independent and doesn't really care of underlying system. D is a practical tool. Since most systems and most programs today still work with ASCII strings, they should be in the language.
Apr 05 2002
Today there are still a lot of Win9x/WinME boxes out there, but that's not going to be the case for long. I don't know what Walter's timeline is for officially releasing D to the world, but let's just say it's 1-Jan-2003. Add another year onto that for people to actually start adopting the language and developing/shipping programs en-masse and we're to 2004. I think the Win9x/WinME numbers will look a lot different in 18+ months. I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that in the not too distant future, ASCII will largely be considered legacy. If you don't want to drop ASCII support completely from D, how about making it (much) more difficult to use by making UNICODE the default? "char" is UNICODE, "achar" is ASCII; a string/character literal is UNICODE, you have to use an ugly A prefix to get ASCII; there are no implicit conversions between UNICODE/ASCII - you've got to call some library routine (or maybe cast) instead. D is a new language, it should look to the future. Dan "Pavel Minayev" <evilone omen.ru> wrote in message news:a8kttp$ued$1 digitaldaemon.com..."J. Daniel Smith" <j_daniel_smith HoTMaiL.com> wrote in message news:a8kprh$4h2$1 digitaldaemon.com...APIs,Walter's comment in the "Delegates" thread about the code void foo(char[]); void foo(wchar[]); ... foo("hello"); being ambiguous made me wonder about the point of supporting ASCII characters in the first place. Why not drop "wchar" and make "char" always means a 2-byte UNICODEcharacter(or even a 4-byte ISO10646 character). With the release of Windows XPlastfall, the need for ASCII support is going to diminish as WinXP replaces Win98/WinME.I believe no more than 10% of my friends have WinNT, 2K or XP. Your suggestion would make it very hard to write programs that run on 9x series, which is still most popular.If you really need a single byte character to interface with legacy"char"use "ubyte" (or "ulong" for "wchar_t" APIs on *IX) convert to/fromasuseneeded. Yea, that makes such code more difficult, but it should all be burried in some class anyway.You can convert a single char; but what about strings? D doesn't convert arrays, AFAIK...It seems that supporting both in D goes against current trends (Java, VBandof VB is bloated, partially because of UNICODE-only strings. Java is platform-independent and doesn't really care of underlying system. D is a practical tool. Since most systems and most programs today still work with ASCII strings, they should be in the language.
Apr 05 2002
"J. Daniel Smith" a écrit :
Today there are still a lot of Win9x/WinME boxes out there, but that's not
going to be the case for long. I don't know what Walter's timeline is for
officially releasing D to the world, but let's just say it's 1-Jan-2003.
Add another year onto that for people to actually start adopting the
language and developing/shipping programs en-masse and we're to 2004. I
think the Win9x/WinME numbers will look a lot different in 18+ months. I
don't think it's much of a stretch to say that in the not too distant
future, ASCII will largely be considered legacy.
If you don't want to drop ASCII support completely from D, how about making
it (much) more difficult to use by making UNICODE the default? "char" is
UNICODE, "achar" is ASCII; a string/character literal is UNICODE, you have
to use an ugly A prefix to get ASCII; there are no implicit conversions
between UNICODE/ASCII - you've got to call some library routine (or maybe
cast) instead.
D is a new language, it should look to the future.
Dan
"Pavel Minayev" <evilone omen.ru> wrote in message
news:a8kttp$ued$1 digitaldaemon.com...
"J. Daniel Smith" <j_daniel_smith HoTMaiL.com> wrote in message
news:a8kprh$4h2$1 digitaldaemon.com...
Walter's comment in the "Delegates" thread about the code
void foo(char[]);
void foo(wchar[]);
...
foo("hello");
being ambiguous made me wonder about the point of supporting ASCII
characters in the first place.
Why not drop "wchar" and make "char" always means a 2-byte UNICODE
character
(or even a 4-byte ISO10646 character). With the release of Windows XP
last
fall, the need for ASCII support is going to diminish as WinXP replaces
Win98/WinME.
I believe no more than 10% of my friends have WinNT, 2K or XP.
Your suggestion would make it very hard to write programs that run
on 9x series, which is still most popular.
If you really need a single byte character to interface with legacy
APIs,
use "ubyte" (or "ulong" for "wchar_t" APIs on *IX) convert to/from
"char"
as
needed. Yea, that makes such code more difficult, but it should all be
burried in some class anyway.
You can convert a single char; but what about strings? D doesn't convert
arrays, AFAIK...
It seems that supporting both in D goes against current trends (Java, VB
and
use
of
VB is bloated, partially because of UNICODE-only strings. Java is
platform-independent and doesn't really care of underlying system.
D is a practical tool. Since most systems and most programs today still
work with ASCII strings, they should be in the language.
how is linux concerning caractere size ?
i personaly see my future rather near linux than XP
roland
Apr 05 2002
"roland" <nancyetroland free.fr> wrote in message news:3CAE2667.1375F510 free.fr...how is linux concerning caractere size ? i personaly see my future rather near linux than XPLinux uses 4 byte wchars. This uses up memory real fast. Unicode may be the future, but it is still many years away, and D should be agnostic about whether the app is ASCII or Unicode.
Apr 05 2002
"Walter" <walter digitalmars.com> wrote in message news:a8lbqb$1d7s$1 digitaldaemon.com..."roland" <nancyetroland free.fr> wrote in message news:3CAE2667.1375F510 free.fr...thehow is linux concerning caractere size ? i personaly see my future rather near linux than XPLinux uses 4 byte wchars. This uses up memory real fast. Unicode may befuture, but it is still many years away, and D should be agnostic about whether the app is ASCII or Unicode.I think memory shouldn't be a concern. I don't think text, as in characters and strings of characters, is the real memory user in today's computing is it? A typical e-mail or document isn't big at all. It's things like images, textures in games and audio and video that consume most space on disk or in memory. I agree that ASCII, although it isn't dead, deserves to die. I think the idea to make 32-bit characters the standard is a good one, although I have to admit I don't know much about the standardisation that is going on in that field. But I do know that 256 characters is way too little! maybe it is just too early to make a decision, when the standardisation hasn't settled down... -- Stijn OddesE_XYZ hotmail.com http://OddesE.cjb.net _________________________________________________ Remove _XYZ from my address when replying by mail
Apr 06 2002
"Walter" <walter digitalmars.com> "OddesE" <OddesE_XYZ hotmail.com> wrote in message news:a8n3tp$18pi$1 digitaldaemon.com...I think memory shouldn't be a concern. I don't think text, as in characters and strings of characters, is the real memory user in today's computing is it? A typical e-mail or document isn't big at all. It's things like images, textures in games and audio and video that consume most space on disk or in memory.It still is a concern. I have an app on linux with wchars, and it still uses 200 megs of ram, mostly because of the 4 bytes per char. Secondly, if you're distributing an executable with a lot of text strings in it, it can bloat up the download size quite a bit. I can also neatly fit all my source code on a CD. I don't want it 4 times bigger <g>.I agree that ASCII, although it isn't dead, deserves to die. I think the idea to make 32-bit characters the standard is a good one, although I have to admit I don't know much about the standardisation that is going on in that field. But I do know that 256 characters is way too little! maybe it is just too early to make a decision, when the standardisation hasn't settled down...Another huge reason to support ASCII in D is because D is meant to interface with C functions. C apps are nearly all written to use ASCII. ASCII support isn't going away anytime soon in operating systems, so D must support it easilly.
Apr 06 2002
So what about my suggestion of making ASCII a bit more difficult to use - that is, Unicode is the prefered/default character type in D. 'char' is a Unicode character and "abc" is a Unicode string. With the release of Windows XP, it's not going to be very long (months, not years) before a Unicode-enabled platform is the norm for most people. And I'm not sure I buy the "memory" argument - my PocketPC which is easily more memory constrainted than any desktop PC only supports Unicode. Dan "Walter" <walter digitalmars.com> wrote in message news:a8lbqb$1d7s$1 digitaldaemon.com..."roland" <nancyetroland free.fr> wrote in message news:3CAE2667.1375F510 free.fr...thehow is linux concerning caractere size ? i personaly see my future rather near linux than XPLinux uses 4 byte wchars. This uses up memory real fast. Unicode may befuture, but it is still many years away, and D should be agnostic about whether the app is ASCII or Unicode.
Apr 08 2002
"J. Daniel Smith" <j_daniel_smith HoTMaiL.com> wrote in message news:a8s2ng$1jg0$1 digitaldaemon.com...So what about my suggestion of making ASCII a bit more difficult to use - that is, Unicode is the prefered/default character type in D. 'char' is a Unicode character and "abc" is a Unicode string.There is no default char type in D. char is ascii, wchar is unicode. The type of "abc" depends on context. The source text can be ascii or unicode (try it!).With the release of Windows XP, it's not going to be very long (months,notyears) before a Unicode-enabled platform is the norm for most people.All win32 platforms support unicode already.And I'm not sure I buy the "memory" argument - my PocketPC which is easily more memory constrainted than any desktop PC only supports Unicode.You can shrink down the memory for unicode quite a bit by using UTF8, at the expense of slowing things down.
Apr 08 2002
But then aren't we full-circle back to
void foo(char[]);
void foo(wchar[]);
...
foo("hello");
being ambiguous? Although it sounds like you can (almost?) support both
Unicode and ASCII transparently, I'd still like to see Unicode implicitly
given more emphasis; for example, the above code snipet would be
void foo(achar[]); // ASCII
void foo(char[]); // Unicode
...
foo("hello"); // Unicode string - calls foo(char[])
foo(A"hello"); // ASCII string - calls foo(achar[])
As far as Win32 platforms go, I guess it depends on what one means by
"supporting Unicode." Only a small handful of Win32 APIs are Unicode on
Win9x (although the recently released MSLU expands that list considerably).
Dell has a complete 1.8Ghz system with 256MB of RAM for $999; given numbers
like that, I'm not overly concerned with either processing power or memory.
Dan
"Walter" <walter digitalmars.com> wrote in message
news:a8t2j5$1mc$1 digitaldaemon.com...
"J. Daniel Smith" <j_daniel_smith HoTMaiL.com> wrote in message
news:a8s2ng$1jg0$1 digitaldaemon.com...
So what about my suggestion of making ASCII a bit more difficult to
use -
that is, Unicode is the prefered/default character type in D. 'char' is
a
Unicode character and "abc" is a Unicode string.
There is no default char type in D. char is ascii, wchar is unicode. The
type of "abc" depends on context. The source text can be ascii or unicode
(try it!).
With the release of Windows XP, it's not going to be very long (months,
not
years) before a Unicode-enabled platform is the norm for most people.
All win32 platforms support unicode already.
And I'm not sure I buy the "memory" argument - my PocketPC which is
easily
more memory constrainted than any desktop PC only supports Unicode.
You can shrink down the memory for unicode quite a bit by using UTF8, at
the
expense of slowing things down.
Apr 09 2002
"J. Daniel Smith" <j_daniel_smith HoTMaiL.com> wrote in message
news:a8und0$3e7$1 digitaldaemon.com...
But then aren't we full-circle back to
void foo(char[]);
void foo(wchar[]);
...
foo("hello");
being ambiguous?
Yes, but that doesn't in any way impede a programmer who wants to write a
full unicode app.
Apr 09 2002
"J. Daniel Smith" <j_daniel_smith HoTMaiL.com> wrote in message news:a8l5o5$17di$1 digitaldaemon.com...D is a new language, it should look to the future.Unicode is not necessary future. Not in the few next years, at least. And after all, you can always use alias in your programs: alias wchar Char;
Apr 05 2002