From: Doug Ewell (doug@ewellic.org)
Date: Sun Jan 11 2009 - 10:37:10 CST
Trond Trosterud <trond dot trosterud at hum dot uit dot no> wrote:
> Governmental experts see 3 drawbacks with UTF-8:
>
> 1. The field length in the database will be longer then the display
> field. So, given a surname "Årø", we will have a display length of 3
> (letters), as compared to the database length of 5 bytes.
> 2. There will have to be a new sorting routine, and a new search
> routine
> 3. Programs may no longer search for characters as single bytes, but
> must in some cases open for search of sequence of bytes.
> 4. Many common programs only support 8-bit character sets
> 5. Data must be removed from registries, converted and replaced
> 6. Millions of lines of code must be changed and tested
Switching from an SBCS architecture to UTF-8 does involve some work, but
these statements contain so much FUD that it's difficult to know where
to begin.
I would definitely want someone to explain to me why (1) matters.
-- Doug Ewell * Thornton, Colorado, USA * RFC 4645 * UTN #14 http://www.ewellic.org http://www1.ietf.org/html.charters/ltru-charter.html http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages ˆ
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