Re: forwarding a message

From: Otto Stolz (Otto.Stolz@uni-konstanz.de)
Date: Thu Oct 14 1999 - 12:33:57 EDT


Am 1999-10-12 hat Jens Siebert geschrieben:
> I would like to receive any new information on the unicode

Cf. <http://www.unicode.org/unicode/standard/versions/Unicode3.0.html>.

> the book =84The Unicode Standard=93

This is an example of the traps to be avoided in the character-encoding
arena: Apparently, the original author, JS, has used Microsoft software
to prepare this message; the sending programm used proprietary code-points
(from MS CP 1252) for the German quote symbols, and still declared its
output to be standard-conforming (ISO 8859-1, in MIME "quoted-printable"
encoding); in due course, the encoding could not be resolved by the re-
ceiver, Sarasvati; hence the encoding byte-sequence was wrongly perceived
as character-sequence and forwarded to the list.

> (appendix C, page C-3, chapter C.3 UTF-16) [...] What is meant by
> `group 00` ???

Cf. Appendix C, page C-2, chapter C.2, 1st paragraph, 1st list-item.

> This term doesn't appear in the literature about the unicode, which
> I have read as yet,

So you have read chapter C.3, but not C.2 as yet? :-)

> knowledge of this term seems to be essential to understand the mentioned
> sentence...

This sentence is indeed difficult, if not to say inaccurate!
You have to read it thus:
  The term UTF-16 stands for UCS Transformation Format for
  *some* (viz. 17 out of 256, i. e. 6.6%) Planes of Group 00
  (but, of course, the essential ones).

The precise range of UCS code-ponts covered by UTF-16 is given in the sequel,
so the sentence in question is not really important.

Btw., ethymologically, "UTF-16" stands for "UCS Transformation Format in
16-bit chunks" (or some such).

Best wishes,
   Otto Stolz



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