Joel Spolsky's explanation of Unicode

#1

Post by tRAS » Thu, Nov 10, 2011, 6:17 AM UTC

Joel Spolsky's explanation of Unicode
joelonsoftware.com

Re: Joel Spolsky's explanation of Unicode

#2

Post by jeberle » Thu, Nov 10, 2011, 7:18 AM UTC

Unicode was originally a 16-bit character set. The only myth is claiming otherwise. There was a 31-bit charset at the same time called ISO 10646. This was not Unicode.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_10646#History_of_ISO_10...

Re: Joel Spolsky's explanation of Unicode

#3

Post by kahawe » Thu, Nov 10, 2011, 10:38 AM UTC

I have yet to work on a project where neither charsets nor line-endings ever pop-up and cause problems... seeing as it is 2011, this is an absolutely abysmal testimony for IT as a whole.

Re: Joel Spolsky's explanation of Unicode

#4

Post by arnoooooo » Thu, Nov 10, 2011, 12:31 PM UTC

kahawe wrote: post #3

I have yet to work on a project where neither charsets nor line-endings ever pop-up and cause problems... seeing as it is 2011, this is an absolutely abysmal testimony for IT as a whole.

Microsoft had/has a lot to do with that.

Re: Joel Spolsky's explanation of Unicode

#5

Post by dpark » Thu, Nov 10, 2011, 5:40 PM UTC

arnoooooo wrote: post #4

kahawe wrote: post #3

I have yet to work on a project where neither charsets nor line-endings ever pop-up and cause problems... seeing as it is 2011, this is an absolutely abysmal testimony for IT as a whole.

Microsoft had/has a lot to do with that.

How is it Microsoft's fault that the world couldn't agree on line-termination or charset (especially charset, since there really was no reasonable option before unicode)?

Re: Joel Spolsky's explanation of Unicode

#6

Post by AutoCorrect » Fri, Nov 11, 2011, 3:42 PM UTC

dpark wrote: post #5

arnoooooo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft had/has a lot to do with that.

How is it Microsoft's fault that the world couldn't agree on line-termination or charset (especially charset, since there really was no reasonable option before unicode)?

CR/LF. That's why.

Re: Joel Spolsky's explanation of Unicode

#7

Post by dpark » Fri, Nov 11, 2011, 4:56 PM UTC

AutoCorrect wrote: post #6

dpark wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it Microsoft's fault that the world couldn't agree on line-termination or charset (especially charset, since there really was no reasonable option before unicode)?

CR/LF. That's why.

That was one of the most popular line ending formats. According to Wikipedia, the following non-MS-related all used CR\LF: DEC TOPS-10, RT-11, CP/M, MP/M, Atari TOS, Symbian OS, Palm OS. Meanwhile Mac OS used just CR, as did the Apple II, Commodore, Acorn BBC, and TRS-80. The only players that used LF were Unix (and derivatives), BeOS, Amiga, and RISC OS.

It just happens that we ended up in a world where basically everything is Unix or Windows, so Windows seems like the odd man out. But history tells a rather different story. The use of CRLF was enshrined in RFC561 (the original email RFC) in 1973, before Unix was popular.