RE: Unicode in VFAT file system

From: Jonathan Rosenne (rosenne@qsm.co.il)
Date: Fri Jul 21 2000 - 04:32:44 EDT


Unicode is the code, which is based on 16 bit chunks of ether or whatever,
and UTF-8 is a biased transformation format designed to save American and
Western Europeans storage space and to give some people a warm feeling by
keeping Unicode in the familiar 8 bit world.

Jony

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael (michka) Kaplan [mailto:michka@trigeminal.com]
> Sent: Friday, July 21, 2000 9:44 AM
> To: Unicode List
> Subject: Re: Unicode in VFAT file system
>
>
> Although there is some truth here.... the fact is that it is not
> really true
> today that everyone equates the two. The default thought on people's minds
> these days when they think of Unicode is UTF-8, it seems like. And this is
> mainly due to applications of Unicode to the web, I think.
>
> In the meantime, Microsoft is still pretty firmly rooted in the idea that
> Unicode=USC-2 (or UTF-16le on Windows 2000). UTF-8 is named UTF-8 and
> considered to be a multibyte encoding.
>
> michka
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Doug Ewell" <dewell@compuserve.com>
> To: "Unicode List" <unicode@unicode.org>
> Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2000 10:41 PM
> Subject: Re: Unicode in VFAT file system
>
>
> > Addison Phillips <addison@inter-locale.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Avoiding for the moment the word-parsing that Markus suggests, Unicode
> > > on Microsoft platforms has always been LE (at least on Intel) and they
> > > have called the encoding they use "UCS-2" (when they bothered with
> > > such things: in the past they always called it "Unicode" as if it were
> > > the *only* encoding). As Unicode has evolved, Microsoft products have
> > > become more exact in this regard.
> >
> > I remember that in the early to mid '90s, before the invention (or at
> > least widespread use) of UTF-8, UTF-32, and surrogates, *everybody* --
> > not just Microsoft -- used the term "Unicode" to refer to what we would
> > now call UCS-2. Even the Unicode Consortium did this! And even now,
> > the few of my co-workers who know about Unicode (I'm trying to spread
> > the word, folks, honest) think a "Unicode text file" is UCS-2 by
> > definition. I don't know what they would think of a UTF-8 file --
> > nobody but me is knowingly using them yet. In any case, this usage is
> > by no means confined to Microsoft.
> >
> > -Doug Ewell
> > Fullerton, California
> >
>



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