> We'll have to deal with multiple untagged codepages/encodings/charsets
> for a long time yet. It's unlikely we'll get file systems to carry any
> meta-information beyond the filename in any portable way and certainly
> not retroactively.
>
And I most emphatically recommend against using filenames for this
purpose for at least the following reasons:
. Different platforms have different filename formats and restrictions
as to what can be in a filename, how long it can be, etc.
. There is no central registry for filename associations. Horrible
confusion arises when different software vendors choose the same
association for two different products or, worse, when files are
transferred across platforms that have different associations.
> For the rest of what constitutes "plain text", the Unicode standard
> covers most of the issues, but not explicitly in one place. The grayer
> part of this discussion is about what constitutes "preformatted plain
> text". I don't think this can be standardized to practical effect. That
> is, you could write a standard, but would anyone use it?
>
Those who needed a guaranteed way to record preformatted plain text in
documents that can persist over long periods of time and across all
applications and platforms would use it.
Even now, there exists such a standard, albeit unwritten, for 8-bit text.
For example, almost every word processor and web browser has a "Save as"
option for "plain text with line breaks" which, in the general case, is the
only reliable interchange format. What will be the Unicode equivalent?
- Frank
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:20:48 EDT