[Openmcl-devel] *default-character-encoding* should be :utf-8

Tom Emerson tremerson at gmail.com
Mon Mar 5 11:30:29 PST 2012


On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 2:14 PM, Ron Garret <ron at flownet.com> wrote:
> Yes, you will note the disclaimer "unless there is a compelling reason not to" use UTF-8.  If you're a native Mandarin speaker interacting only with other native Mandarin speakers then UTF-8 might not be the best choice for you.  But then you're also very unlikely to be reading this.

I've worked with a lot of (C and C++) code that has come from Japan
and Korea, and the comments are almost always in one of their local
encodings (Shift JIS, EUC-KR) and not some variant of UTF-16. Only an
idiot would store their source code in UTF-16, given the majority of
the characters that such sources contain are in the US-ASCII range.

I have personally never come across a source file encoded in UTF-16.
I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but it is unlikely.

And even if you did, chances are the file will be self-identifying
with the UniBOM at the front anyway.

UTF-8 is, for contemporary (as in the last 10 years) code, the correct default.

    -tree

-- 
Tom Emerson
tremerson at gmail.com
http://www.dreamersrealm.net/tree



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