Re: Hexadecimal never again

From: Tex Texin (tex@i18nguy.com)
Date: Wed Aug 20 2003 - 02:29:53 EDT

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    Jill.Ramonsky@Aculab.com wrote:
    >
    > Thanks, but not good enough.
    >
    > What guarantee do I have that other Unicode characters will not be added in
    > the future which have the property "Hex_Digit"?

    One solution is to join the consortium and be able to vote against such a
    thing happening!

    If it is a concern you can still implement your algorithm to allow the hex
    digits to be separately or externally specifiable, perhaps using John's chart.
    (With perhaps a slight attendant security risk... ;-) )

    From a practical standpoint, I think it is more likely that the base will
    change rather than the hex characters.
    After all, digits have been constant for a long time, but the base has
    changed. Initially it was binary, then it was octal, and now hex arithmetic is
    common. It seems more likely to me that we might switch to another base (32?
    64?) as platforms expand, before we started adding redundant characters to hex
    arithmetic. Somewhere, someday, some wristwatch-sized, space-deprived display
    device manufacturer will be complaining that he doesn't have enough room on
    his device to show the hex codes for the combining sequence of unicode
    characters missing in his font, and so instead of hex, he wants to use base64
    characters, but only if the characters are defined in the standard....

    (Guess I am showing my age to be recalling flipping binary switches...) ;-)

    All your base are belong to us!
    tex



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