Hallo.
I am one of those who started this childish joke of introducing implausible
"UTF-..." acronyms at nearly every post.
I found that the joke is getting very fun but also that it may be starting
confusing people, so I fill compelled to quit joking for a moment and make
clear which ones are the real UTF's and which ones aren't.
Warning: unlike most of my messages this is deadly serious! This is the
actual situation of UTF's.
1) UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 are the only three real EXISTING Unicode
Transformation Formats. They are official and part of the Unicode standard.
2) UTF-1 and UTF-7 are real UTF's but they are now OBSOLETE.
3) UTF-8S is a real PROPOSAL by Oracle Peoplesoft et al. It is not an
existing UTF but it could be one day, if accepted in the Unicode standard.
4) UTF-8-16 is an alternative name that I have seen for UTF-8S.
5) UTF-32S is a borderline case. I am quite sure that it was proposed with
tongue in cheek but, then, someone took it seriously because it complements
UTF-8S with an analogous 32-bit UTF to make a consistent system.
6) UTF-16X (also named UTF-16S or UTF-16F) is definitely humor, although I
am probably not the only one to think that it is technically more "serious"
than UTF-8S.
7) UTF-64, UTF-17, UTF-Z (this was private, but it could leak out), UTF-168,
UTF-33, UTF-48, and any other thing beginning by "UTF" are just JOKES,
PROVOCATIONS, PARODIES. Smile!
OK. End of deadly serious content. Please everybody restart joking.
_ Marco
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Jul 06 2001 - 00:17:18 EDT