From: Hans Aberg (haberg@math.su.se)
Date: Thu Jan 20 2005 - 19:50:58 CST
On 2005/01/20 22:46, Kenneth Whistler at kenw@sybase.com wrote:
> Geoffrey continued:
>
>> My comments need clarification. I meant that Microsoft insisted
>> on writing datafiles containing Unicode data in little-endian
>> format. I have no concerns about other data, indeed I was
>> writing binary data in little-endian format in the 80s myself.
>
> It wasn't just Microsoft. It was anyone writing significant
> applications running on Intel architecture circa 1990. It
> was WordPerfect, too -- and as Rick pointed out, the BOM
> as concept came from WordPerfect, *not* from Microsoft.
It is not a software company issue, but a CPU-hardware manufacturer issue.
Intel used little endian, and Motorola used big endian. Then software
writers will have to follow that, because shifting to the other endian is
not supported on the CPU level, making it at least difficult or low
performance.
Hans Aberg
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