Re: UTF-16 is not Unicode

From: Michael Everson (everson@evertype.com)
Date: Wed Feb 13 2002 - 05:39:53 EST


At 14:28 -0600 2002-02-12, David Starner wrote:
>
>What happens when a user is told to save in UTF-16? What about when two
>users running different operating systems try to pass files about? And
>why would Unicode be any clearer to a naive user than UTF-16?
>
>IMO, UTF-16 is as clear as Unicode, and more accurate. Being consistent
>among platforms is a needed plus.

Internet Explorer calls Unicode (UTF-8) "Universal Alphabet". Now I
would say pretty much the same thing to the layman, but the
distinction between what's on the web (UTF-8) and what might be coded
elsewhere (UTF-16) should be made.

Apple's TextExit with OS X gives a set of choices for encodings to
the user in the Open File dialogue:

Western (Mac Roman)
Western (Windows Latin 1)
Japanese (Mac OS)
Japanese (Shift JIS)
Traditional Chinese (Mac OS)
Simplified Chinese (Mac OS)
Korean (Mac OS)
Unicode
UTF-8

Apple's OS 9 WorldText can save as UTF-16 but calls it "Standard Unicode".

Cyclone's Unicode options are four:

Standard (16 bit)
Standard (16 bit) Canonical Decomposition
UTF-7
UTF-8

These distinctions are interesting. It shows that many users are
expected to know, or find out, about specific encoding differences.

I think it's clear that Unicode should give some advice as to how to
announce encoding options in a useful way to the end user. For the
two encodings we are discussing, may I suggest the following standard
menu items:

Unicode (Raw, UTF-16)
Unicode (Web, UTF-8)

-- 
Michael Everson *** Everson Typography *** http://www.evertype.com



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Wed Feb 13 2002 - 05:57:04 EST