Re: Strange UTF-8 in Java

From: Rick McGowan (rmcgowan@apple.com)
Date: Wed Sep 30 1998 - 14:08:21 EDT


Mark wrote...

> You apparently didn't read John's message. I think you are slamming the
> Java folks unnecessarily.

Well, I read John's note. Perhaps my wording was on the harsh side...
Anyway, it's still my opinion that they should not have made a public
function that produces non-conforming UTF-8. Why? Because it leads to
problems and confusion like this! I don't care what they do internally, as
long as it doesn't leak out into the world. And it's ALREADY leaked out if
people are asking about it! That's an unfortunate turn of events.

As John went on to say:

> the only real blunder the Javasoft folks made in this respect
> was in the names of the methods DataInput.readUTF() and
DataOutput.writeUTF()

I'd ask, why are these methods, which apparently produce or consume
non-conforming UTF-8, part of some publically accessible API? Oh, well.
It's a blunder I guess, and I don't really care very much -- except that now
people are asking about it, and it causes confusion and wastes peoples' time
talking about it and answering questions about it. At least, as you point
out, it's documented, so that's fine, and you answered my question.

By the way, regarding documentation you wrote:

> (more available than your own company's API documentation, I believe),
> since it is on the web.

Ahem. Did you check the web? Last time I looked, there was some rather
up-to-date documentation at:

        http://gemma.apple.com/techpubs/rhapsody/rhapsody.html

Anyway, I'm not a Java expert, so I'll leave it at that. I suppose there
should be an entry in some FAQ about this question. Do we have a FAQ these
days?

        Rick



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