On Mon, Jan 21, 2002 at 02:20:17PM +0100, Marco Cimarosti wrote:
> What this means in practice for website developers is:
>
> 1) SCSU text can only be edited with a text editor which properly decodes
> the *whole* file on load and re-encodes it on save. On the other hand, UTF-8
> text can also be edited using an encoding-unaware editor, although non-ASCII
> text is invisible.
True for users of Latin-based writing systems. Probably of little
comfort to users of Indic or Chinese-based writing systems. Also, I've
heard several complaints from translators working on Gnome and similar
projects where they ended up with mixed Latin-1/UTF-8 because people
edited the file with an encoding-unaware editor and didn't know better.
Better to stick with editors that are aware of your encoding.
> 2) SCSU text cannot be built by assembling binary pieces coming from
> external sources.
It's not really designed for that. If you're assembling things, just
run the output through a UTF-8 to SCSU converter.
> 3) A SCSU page can only be accepted by browsers and e-mail readers that are
> able to decode it. On the other hand, UTF-8 also works on old ASCII-based
> browsers, although non-ASCII text is clearly not properly displayed.
Again, probably of little comfort to users of non-Latin scripts. The
similar argument, that UTF-8 displays on virtually all recent mail
readers and browsers and that SCSU displays on none, has much more
impact.
-- David Starner - starner@okstate.edu, dvdeug/jabber.com (Jabber) Pointless website: http://dvdeug.dhis.org When the aliens come, when the deathrays hum, when the bombers bomb, we'll still be freakin' friends. - "Freakin' Friends"
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