RE: Stateful encoding mechanisms

From: Peter Constable (petercon@microsoft.com)
Date: Fri May 20 2005 - 10:33:43 CDT

  • Next message: Peter Kirk: "Re: ASCII and Unicode lifespan"

    > From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org]
    On Behalf
    > Of Dean Snyder

    > If <0xD800 0xDF02> is interpreted differently than <0xD801 0xDF02>,
    then
    > the high surrogate is altering the interpretation of 0xDF02, the low
    > surrogate.

    Hmmm... Or is it that the low surrogate alters the interpretation of the
    high surrogate? (An "anti-state"?)

    No, it's that neither the high surrogate nor the low surrogate have an
    independent interpretation as coded characters; they are interpreted as
    a pair. Now, that may be done by some particular process implementation
    in some stateful manner, but I wouldn't say that makes the encoding-form
    representation stateful.

    > I assert that that is stateful in the context of discussing
    > fragment fragility.

    If you would just say that there is fragment fragility without arguing
    over what is considered stateful, you'd probably find agreement. After
    all, fragility is the real concern, not whether you initial statement
    that surrogates are a stateful encoding mechanism can be upheld.

    > By the way, can you indeed tell us what the "unique status" of the
    code
    > unit 0xDF02 is? And if it has one, why it is not spelled out in the
    standard?

    This seems to be a purely polemic statement: it seems more likely that
    you're simply trying to force Ken to say he's wrong about something than
    that you're really looking for further documentation in the standard. If
    so, it isn't a constructive approach to interaction.

    Peter Constable



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri May 20 2005 - 10:34:43 CDT