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What every software developer must know about Unicode in 2023

tonsky.me

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Re: What every software developer must know about Unicode in 2023

#491

Post by Akronymus »

gdprrrr wrote: post #269
School-Cotton wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most European keyboard layouts have it the other way around: first press a "dead key" for the diacritic mark and then the letter to apply it to. Which ones? At least the French and German ones don’t work like that: there is no composing, just separate keys for all the characters with diacritics that appear in the language.

On the German Layout the backtick (next to the 1 key) is a dead key.

Whichbis the thing that finally pushed me over the edge and switch to the US layout. backticks are something I use all the time.

Re: What every software developer must know about Unicode in 2023

#492

Post by HelloNurse »

posix86 wrote: post #329
gumby wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or typing 'o' + '¨' to produce 'ö' but realizing you wanted to type 'ô', there just one backspace press would revert it to 'o' again and you could press '^' to get the 'ô'. This is a good example because in German I would expect 'o' + '¨' + to leave no character at all while in French I would expect 'e' + '`' + to leave the e behind because in my mind it was a typo. The rendering of brahmic- and arabic-derived scri…

But typing "ö" (e.g. swiss keyboard) and pressing delete & getting an o would be annoying af

Pragmatically, to get from "ö" to "o" one would delete "ö" (hopefully by pressing backspace) and then type "o"; deleting the combining marks isn't actually useful.

Re: What every software developer must know about Unicode in 2023

#493

Post by toastercat »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #449
toastercat wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bad joke. It made me close the browser tab.

> It's a bad joke. To each their own. > It made me close the browser tab. If you can't handle refreshing or merely clicking it again, that's you having a problem, not the site having a problem.

> If you can't handle refreshing or merely clicking it again, that's you having a problem, not the site having a problem.

No, it's the site's problem. The contrast between the blinding radioactive yellow background and the font is eye straining and doesn't meet the WCAG standards for accessible text. And the dark mode is unusable. The joke would be funnier if there was a real dark mode or if the light mode was readable.

Re: What every software developer must know about Unicode in 2023

#494

Post by dystroy »

nigma1337 wrote: post #29
davidham wrote: post #10

Is it just me, or is anyone else seeing what looks like the mouse pointer of everyone else reading the page, like 1,000 little ants on the screen

Distracted me from reading the article, I just started chasing other people around.

That's what's missing. When I click on a pointer, its owner should have the article replaced with a "GAME OVER" message.

Re: What every software developer must know about Unicode in 2023

#495

Post by paledot »

nicolaslem wrote: post #461
kergonath wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The AZERTY layout is nothing if not inconsistent.

For this specific example, it is actually quite pragmatic. "é" being used many orders of magnitude more often than "ë" in French, it makes sense for it to have its own key.

Also, French has no other character that takes an acute accent. For the same reason, ç isn't typed with a dead key on French AZERTY.

Re: What every software developer must know about Unicode in 2023

#496

Post by toastercat »

spacechild1 wrote: post #447
toastercat wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Not every browser has reader mode 2. I don't think it's a very good joke to post long-form content on your blog with the expectation that it's basically unreadable without a reader mode. > The fact that people seem to take it seriously says something about the contemporary state of webdesign :) Mind expanding and what it says exactly about contemporary web design? Whether I take it seriously or not doesn't change…

> Mind expanding and what it says exactly about contemporary web design? The same as when political satire is indistinguishable from actual politics. It means that the real things has sort of become a joke itself.

I can agree that most modern web design is bad. I can also agree that the web design on tonsky's site is bad, but OK, I acknowledge that it is intentionally bad; so bad that it's unreadable. I had myself a chuckle now, and next time I see a link to tonsky's site, I'll click on it, chuckle, and immediately leave.

Re: What every software developer must know about Unicode in 2023

#497

Post by toastercat »

throwaway290 wrote: post #464
toastercat wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having a hard time reconciling "he knows what he is doing" with him making his site practically unusable without a reader mode, which by the way, not every browser supports (especially on mobile).

Don't even think of switching on the dark (night) mode with that attitude! :D I really enjoyed the tongue in cheek design. I think every modern browser either allows you to turn on reader mode (especially on mobile) or just turn off CSS. This particular article works excellently even in w3m.

> Don't even think of switching on the dark (night) mode with that attitude! :D

:D

> I really enjoyed the tongue in cheek design. I think every modern browser either allows you to turn on reader mode (especially on mobile) or just turn off CSS. This particular article works excellently even in w3m.

Firefox Focus on mobile does not have Reader Mode.

Re: What every software developer must know about Unicode in 2023

#498

Post by dystroy »

ssokolow wrote: post #438

> Before comparing strings or searching for a substring, normalize! ...and learn about the TR39 Skeleton Algorithm for Unicode Confusables. Far too few people writing spam-handling code know about that thing. (Basically, it generates matching keys from arbitrary strings so that visually similar characters compare identical, so those Disqus/Facebook/etc. spam messages promoting things like BITCO1N pump-and-dumps or us…

But not all normalizations are done to fight spam, not all of them should be interested in visual similarity.

I normalize strings in searches not because of bad intents but because for all user related purposes "Comunicações" and "Comunicações" are the same, their different encodings being more of an accident.

Re: What every software developer must know about Unicode in 2023

#499

Post by paledot »

Symbiote wrote: post #463
bmicraft wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They sure are letters, but they aren't generally thought of as being in the alphabet (which seems to be why they are just kinda tacked on after a space on wikipedia) and get ordered as if they where just the base letter (mostly)

Note that in Swedish they are considered letters, and in Danish and Norwegian Æ, Ø and Å are letters.

Letters which are sorted separately from what we'd think of as the base characters in English (they appear at the end of the alphabet, as W X Y Z Æ Ø Å, with C often omitted in Norwegian).

By contrast, my French dictionary has énorme nestled between enorgueillir and enquiérir. (Looking for an example does underscore some of the patterns in the language: page after page of ét~ with only a few et~ and one êt~ among them; pages of ex~ with no éx~ at all.)

Re: What every software developer must know about Unicode in 2023

#500

Post by throwaway290 »

toastercat wrote: post #497
throwaway290 wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't even think of switching on the dark (night) mode with that attitude! :D I really enjoyed the tongue in cheek design. I think every modern browser either allows you to turn on reader mode (especially on mobile) or just turn off CSS. This particular article works excellently even in w3m.

> Don't even think of switching on the dark (night) mode with that attitude! :D :D > I really enjoyed the tongue in cheek design. I think every modern browser either allows you to turn on reader mode (especially on mobile) or just turn off CSS. This particular article works excellently even in w3m. Firefox Focus on mobile does not have Reader Mode.

Fair enough. Tbh at a different time I would probably be as pissed at the author as anyone. Might be mood dependent.

I should also add that the night mode won't be as fun on mobile either, just checked and I don't think it works with pointer events for the effect

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