From: Doug Ewell (dewell@adelphia.net)
Date: Fri Sep 09 2005 - 13:32:24 CDT
The quick, simple, and correct answer to Dan Masarick's original
question:
"Has anyone compiled a list of supported languages for UTF8, UTF16?"
is
"No, they haven't, and they probably never will."
Someone can always come up with an example of a language that isn't
"supported" by Unicode -- that is, not all orthographic characters
absolutely required by a script commonly used for that language in some
community are encoded -- but that simply highlights the point that it's
much easier to compile a list of languages that are NOT supported.
I still wonder if Dan understood the question he was asking.
Periodically, the list gets a question about "UTF-8" and "UTF-16" that
shows that the writer does not understand these are just different ways
of representing the same characters, or a question about "Unicode" and
"ISO 10646" that shows that the writer does not understand these two
standards share the exact same character repertoire. Although Dan did
not indicate that he expected the "list of supported languages" for
UTF-8 to be different from that for UTF-16, the way the question was
phrased makes me wonder.
I'm afraid the list is at risk of falling into a hole debating this "how
many languages on the head of a pin" question, when the real underlying
question may be completely different.
-- Doug Ewell Fullerton, California http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
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